Where chronic fatigue at work comes from and what your team can change

Why time off does not fix an overloaded process

After a long weekend the team comes back in a better mood. On Tuesday, however, ten urgent messages arrive, along with three changes of priority and a phone call asking about a report that was never planned. By Thursday people are exhausted again. In a set-up like this, rest alone will not change the source of the problem. Fatigue can stem from the sheer volume of work, but also from unpredictability and the need to keep switching attention. What employees often find especially hard is the feeling that even work done well does not bring them any closer to finishing their tasks. A manager should check whether projects have realistic deadlines, how much unplanned work lands on the team and who can decide which matters are no longer urgent. If everything is needed “yesterday”, people cannot tell critical matters apart from those that merely suit the sender. Without that decision, talking about recovery will remain a well-meant but ineffective add-on.

Not every loss of energy means burnout

WHO describes burnout as an occupational phenomenon linked to chronic stress, accompanied by exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism towards work, and a reduced sense of effectiveness. In ICD-11 it is not a stand-alone medical diagnosis. Fatigue, however, can have many causes: lack of sleep, caring for loved ones, illness, the effects of treatment or overload at work. A manager should not guess at a diagnosis from how an employee looks, nor collect details about their health. What they can do is talk about how work is organised: “Over the last month you’ve regularly been working late. I want to understand exactly what’s causing it and what we can take off your plates.” If one person reports severe symptoms, it is worth respecting their privacy and letting them know what help is available. A team is not a doctor’s surgery, but it does have real influence over tasks, time pressure and the way problems are handled.

For a week, look at the workload rather than running a mood survey

For five days, collect data – anonymously or in some other safe way – on how work actually unfolds: planned tasks, unplanned urgent tasks, meetings, on-call duties, unplanned rework and messages after hours. This is not about monitoring every minute or ranking who is busiest. It is about seeing which processes regularly need rescuing. At the briefing, ask: “What takes up our time without improving quality?”, “Which decisions have to wait for one person?” and “Do we have a clear right to turn down a less important task?” Compare the answers with operational data such as timeliness, the amount of rework and backlogs. When employees say “we don’t have time to actually work”, check whether they really are stuck in back-to-back meetings with no time to carry out what was agreed. Observations gathered this way help you talk about the process rather than judge individual people’s resilience.

Micro-breaks help, but they cannot replace reducing demands

A 2022 meta-analysis by Albulescu and colleagues found that short breaks were associated with less fatigue and a greater sense of energy. For overall performance, however, the effect was not statistically significant, and the results depended on factors such as the type of task. You must not conclude from this that a five-minute break will solve a permanent staff shortage. In knowledge work it is worth planning time free from interruptions; in physical work, make sure people have a real opportunity to rest in line with the nature of the job and the regulations. It is just as important that employees do not feel guilty when they take breaks. If the manager keeps messaging people while they are resting, the formal rule will not work. Work with fewer distractions may be more efficient, but this needs to be checked in the specific process. The aim is not to make people “more productive despite exhaustion”, but to organise work so that they can do it well without being constantly exhausted.

The hardest decision: what we stop expecting

A team may set its priorities perfectly and then receive four conflicting instructions from four directors. That is why agreements should cover managers too: who can change priorities and which tasks then have to be pushed back. Try to limit the number of parallel projects, shorten meetings that produce no decisions, create a clear window for urgent matters and arrange cover during absences. If the service standard cannot be maintained with current staffing levels, the manager must name the gap rather than constantly asking the team for extra effort. In the 2025 study by Fan and colleagues, reduced working hours combined with organisational changes were associated with improvements in participants’ well-being. That is not, however, a promise that an identical model will work in every company. You can start with a smaller, measurable experiment: for a month, one category of tasks cannot be labelled “urgent” without a justification.

How to check that the new rules haven’t shifted the burden elsewhere

After a month, compare not only how tired people say they are, but also the amount of overtime, work done quietly at home, timeliness, the number of errors and customer complaints. If one department has regained its calm at the expense of the night shift, the solution is only apparent. Ask employees in different functions separately, because an average can hide an unequal division of duties. It is also good to measure predictability: how many sudden tasks come up in a typical week, who approves them and whether they really push other work aside. Together, name two or three things that have not improved and decide what needs intervention from a higher level. If the change has brought relief, build it into your normal ways of working instead of treating it as a one-off initiative. Fatigue at work will not disappear thanks to a well-being slogan, but concrete decisions about resources and priorities can genuinely reduce its causes.

Chronic team fatigue calls for a conversation about work, not just about rest. It is worth seeing where overtime, interruptions and conflicting priorities arise, then removing some of the strain and measuring the effects. It is managers who make decisions about the scope of work, which is why simply asking employees to be more resilient is not enough.

How Em helps a manager talk about chronic fatigue

Katarzyna leads a customer service team. Everyone says they are tired, but every meeting ends with “It’s just that time of year”. She describes to Em a typical week, how often urgent requests come in, the on-call hours and three recurring sources of chaos. She asks for help preparing a conversation that will not turn into complaining with no decisions. Em suggests specific questions about tasks, feedback and interruptions, as well as a neutral opening that does not imply anyone is less resilient. Katarzyna rehearses her response to her director’s objection: “But we can’t just stop serving customers.” With Em, she draws up two proposals: cutting back internal meetings and a single escalation path for urgent matters. If she has access to aggregated insights about the team, she can take into account differences in how people work together, instead of assuming everyone will react the same way. After the conversation, she writes down who is responsible for each action, the workload measures and the date for checking the results. Em helps her move from a general sense of exhaustion to a shared plan for changing how the work is done.