Burnout-related turnover and lost productivity cost organizations worldwide $322 billion every year. Gallup's research connects employee wellbeing directly to business outcomes — productivity, absenteeism, employee retention and quality — and identifies the workplace conditions that determine whether employees are thriving or struggling. This page covers what the data show and what organizations can do about it.
Why Wellbeing Is a Productivity Variable, Not an HR Initiative
A strong wellbeing strategy functions as a leading indicator of organizational health. Gallup's economic research shows that wellbeing reliably predicts future absenteeism, employee performance, healthcare use, engagement and turnover, signaling risk and opportunity before those conditions appear in traditional performance or cost metrics. When wellbeing is low, employee productivity and engagement decline, burnout rises, and turnover accelerates.
Only one in four U.S. employees strongly agree that their organization cares about their overall wellbeing. That figure has been near the record low since early 2024. Employees who believe their organization cares about their wellbeing show measurably higher engagement, productivity and retention.
The Five Elements of Wellbeing
Gallup's research identifies five interconnected elements of wellbeing:
- Career — liking what you do every day and being motivated to achieve your goals
- Social — having supportive relationships and love in your life
- Financial — effectively managing your economic life
- Physical — having good health and enough energy to get things done
- Community — the sense of engagement and involvement in the area where you live
Career wellbeing is the most foundational. In the absence of a good job and fulfilling career, Gallup finds there is no “Net Thriving.” When organizations address both wellbeing and engagement, the effects are additive, beneficial for employees and business outcomes alike.
The Carewashing Problem
Organizations have invested substantially in wellness programs and wellbeing initiatives since the pandemic, but employees haven't felt it. The percentage of employees who strongly agree that their organization cares about their overall wellbeing fell to 21% in early 2024, tying the record low. Wellbeing ranks among the top priorities for one in four CHROs, yet those investments have not moved the needle for the workforce as a whole.
Gallup identifies this as a risk of "carewashing,” where organizations provide superficial wellbeing support and employee wellness programs while neglecting the root causes of burnout and disengagement. Employees may perceive these initiatives as empty words if they see no results, even when leaders channel resources into benefits, employee health services, employee mental health services or wellness programs.
The gap between organizational investment and employee experience points to a common misdiagnosis. One of the most significant factors influencing employee wellbeing is the quality of management. When employees are engaged at work, they report 42% lower workplace stress than actively disengaged employees. Addressing management quality and engagement is the mechanism through which wellbeing actually improves.
What Gallup's Workplace Wellbeing Research Shows
Global employee wellbeing improved for the first time in three years in 2025, rising one percentage point to 34% thriving globally. In the U.S., the picture is more concerning: Worker thriving fell to 46% in Q4 2025, the lowest level since Q1 2022, when 53% were thriving. For the first time in Gallup's tracking, more U.S. workers are struggling than thriving.
Gallup measures wellbeing through its “Net Thriving” metric, sorting employees into thriving, struggling and suffering categories based on how they rate their current and future lives. Net Thriving predicts future employee absenteeism, performance, healthcare use, engagement and turnover before those conditions appear in traditional metrics.
What Thriving Employees Produce
The organizational case for wellbeing is direct. Compared with struggling or suffering employees, thriving employees:
- miss 53% fewer days of work due to health problems
- are 32% less likely to be actively seeking a new job
- report higher quality and quantity of output
- show greater involvement in organizational initiatives
- experience more positive daily emotions and fewer negative ones
Wellbeing and Engagement Are Mutually Reinforcing
Gallup's research shows that engagement and wellbeing reinforce each other, but the relationship is not symmetrical. High wellbeing alone does not produce high engagement, and high engagement alone does not sustain wellbeing. When both are present, the effects compound.
Gallup's 2026 data on Germany illustrates this directly: German employees report relatively strong wellbeing alongside persistently low engagement, one of the lowest rates in the world. Organizations that invest in one while neglecting the other leave real performance and retention value on the table.
When both are present, highly engaged teams consistently report higher wellbeing alongside higher productivity, higher profitability and lower turnover. Engaged employees report 42% lower employee stress than actively disengaged employees. Remote workers who are both engaged and thriving in their wellbeing are significantly less likely to be actively seeking a new job than those who have one without the other.
Gallup finds that in the absence of a good job and fulfilling career, there is no Net Thriving. Career wellbeing — liking what you do and being motivated every day — is the most foundational of the five elements. Improving management quality and engagement is the most direct path organizations have to improving workforce wellbeing.
Burnout Prevention: The Burnout Crisis and What Drives It
Employee burnout is widespread and worsening. Two-thirds of full-time U.S. workers experience burnout on the job sometimes, very often or always. Thirty-one percent of U.S. women employed full time say they very often or always feel burned out, compared with 23% of men. The organizational costs are direct: Burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take a sick day, are 2.6 times as likely to be actively seeking a different job and have 13% lower confidence in their own performance. Globally, burnout costs $322 billion in turnover and lost productivity annually.
Burnout at Work Is Not Just About Hours
Engaged employees who have job flexibility tend to work more hours per week than the average employee while reporting higher wellbeing. Burnout is commonly attributed to overwork, but how employees experience their workload has a stronger influence on burnout than the number of hours worked. When people feel inspired, motivated and supported in their work, they do more work, and that work is significantly less stressful on their overall health and wellbeing.
The data on hours and burnout make this concrete. Burnout risk increases significantly as weekly hours climb, but engagement changes the equation entirely. Engaged employees working 45 or more hours per week are far less likely to burn out than not engaged and actively disengaged employees working the same hours. Eighty percent of younger engaged workers and 86% of older engaged workers rarely or never feel burned out, even when working 45 or more hours per week.
Employees who have the opportunity to do what they do best are more engaged, less stressed and significantly less likely to experience burnout frequently. Employees who have a choice in deciding what tasks to do, when to do them and how much time to spend on them are 43% less likely to experience high levels of burnout. The implication: Reducing hours without addressing management quality and the five root causes will not solve burnout.
The Five Root Causes
Gallup identifies five workplace conditions that most strongly predict burnout — all of them influenced by manager behavior:
- Unfair treatment at work — Employees who strongly agree that they are often treated unfairly are 2.3 times more likely to experience high burnout.
- Unmanageable workload — Both the volume of work and how employees experience it contribute; engaged employees working 45 or more hours per week burn out far less often than disengaged employees working the same hours.
- Unclear role expectations — Employees who strongly agree that they know what is expected of them are 47% less likely to experience frequent burnout.
- Lack of manager support — Managers who fail to communicate clearly and provide support become a cause of burnout rather than its cure.
- Unreasonable time pressure — Chronic deadline pressure without adequate resources or autonomy produces sustained stress that compounds over time.
Manager Effectiveness and Sustainable Productivity
The manager is the primary variable in employee wellbeing, not work location, not benefits programs and not wellness initiatives. Gallup and Workhuman's 2024 research across 4,439 U.S. employees found that implementing practices that put people first is the key to elevating employee wellbeing, and that leaders and managers — not workplace policies — are the mechanism through which that happens.
Role Clarity Is the Foundation
Over the past five years, clarity of expectations at work has declined across the U.S. workforce, with remote and hybrid employees experiencing this decline at twice the rate. Consistent ambiguity at work generates stress, hinders productivity, and burdens workers trying to balance work and life responsibilities.
Employees who strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work are 47% less likely to experience frequent burnout. Role clarity is one of the most direct and controllable interventions available to managers and one of the most neglected.
Engaged Managers Build Thriving Teams and Improve Team Performance
Disengaged managers cannot build thriving teams. Gallup's cascade effect is as true for wellbeing as it is for engagement: When managers are disengaged, their teams are more likely to be disengaged, more likely to experience burnout and less likely to be thriving. Manager engagement fell nine points between 2022 and 2025 — the steepest decline of any worker category — and the effects have cascaded downward into team engagement and wellbeing.
In best-practice organizations, where 79% of managers are engaged, teams consistently show higher engagement, lower burnout and stronger wellbeing outcomes. The gap between those organizations and the global average is not explained by pay, benefits or work arrangements. It is explained by how managers lead.
Respect at Work Is a Wellbeing Driver
Only 37% of U.S. employees strongly agree they are treated with respect at work, a figure that has returned to its record low. Respect at work is one of the strongest predictors of employee wellbeing and psychological safety, and its absence is one of the root causes of burnout. Managers who model respectful treatment, address unfair behavior and create psychologically safe environments directly influence this metric. Without deliberate attention, respect erodes and wellbeing follows.
What Leaders Can Do to Build a Sustainable Productivity Culture
Gallup's research identifies four actions that build a sustainable productivity culture: integrating wellbeing into the employee life cycle, building recognition into the culture, developing managers as wellbeing champions, and addressing the root causes of burnout directly.
Integrate Wellbeing Into the Employee Life Cycle
Sustainable productivity cultures treat wellbeing as a performance system, not a benefit. Gallup recommends integrating all five elements of wellbeing — career, social, financial, physical and community — into HR strategy, employee development efforts, and benefits design. Organizations that successfully close the gap between wellbeing investment and employee experience do three things: They align their workforce around a shared understanding of wellbeing, they drive adoption by incorporating wellbeing into work practices and manager behaviors, and they sustain it through ongoing measurement and accountability.
When employees strongly agree that their organization cares about their overall wellbeing, they are 73% less likely to feel burned out, 53% less likely to be watching for or actively seeking a new job, and seven times as likely to strongly agree that they would recommend their organization as a great place to work.
Make Employee Recognition a Structural Priority
Employees who strongly agree that recognition is an important part of their organization's culture are 4.2 times more likely to strongly agree that their organization cares about their overall wellbeing. Recognition is among the most direct and cost-effective wellbeing interventions available and one of the most underused. It communicates organizational values, reinforces desired behaviors, and meets the fundamental human need to be seen and valued for contributions beyond job performance.
Develop Managers as Wellbeing Champions
By changing how people are managed, organizations can address engagement and wellbeing simultaneously. Gallup identifies three specific actions leaders can take to reduce carewashing and improve the employee wellbeing experience:
- Create awareness and shared understanding of wellbeing at every level of leadership, from senior executives to frontline managers.
- Incorporate wellbeing into manager behaviors, performance conversations and work practices.
- Sustain the culture through ongoing measurement, accountability and reinforcement rather than one-time initiatives.
The organizations that make this work treat wellbeing as something people talk about, encourage and do together, helping create a stronger workplace culture from leaders and managers all the way to the front line.
Frequently Asked Questions About Wellbeing and Productivity
What is sustainable productivity?
Sustainable productivity means maintaining high performance over time without burning out the people producing it. Gallup's research identifies employee engagement and wellbeing as the two conditions that make productivity sustainable. When both are present, employees perform consistently, stay longer and contribute more. When either declines, performance becomes unstable and costly to recover.
How does employee wellbeing affect productivity?
Thriving employees miss 53% fewer days of work due to health problems, are 32% less likely to be actively seeking a new job, and consistently report higher output quality than struggling or suffering employees. Gallup's research shows that wellbeing reliably predicts future absenteeism, performance and turnover, making it a leading indicator of productivity, not just an HR metric.
What are the main causes of employee burnout?
Gallup identifies five root causes: unfair treatment at work, unmanageable workload, unclear role expectations, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure. All five are significantly influenced by manager behavior. Addressing burnout through wellness programs alone — without addressing these root causes — produces limited results.
Is burnout caused by working too many hours?
Working long hours increases burnout risk, but Gallup's research shows that how employees experience their workload matters more than the number of hours worked. Engaged employees working 45 or more hours per week are far less likely to burn out than disengaged employees working the same hours. Eighty percent of younger engaged workers and 86% of older engaged workers rarely or never feel burned out, even at 45 or more hours per week. The five root causes of burnout — unfair treatment, unmanageable workload, unclear expectations, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure — are all within a manager's control, and addressing them is more effective than reducing hours alone.
How can managers reduce burnout on their teams?
Managers can reduce burnout by addressing the five root causes directly: treating employees fairly and consistently, helping manage workload and priorities, clarifying role expectations, providing support and coaching, and reducing unnecessary time pressure. Employees who strongly agree that they know what is expected of them are 47% less likely to experience frequent burnout. Gallup's research shows that burnout is not primarily a workload problem. It is a management problem.
What does Gallup's research say about employee wellbeing?
Gallup measures wellbeing through its Net Thriving metric, categorizing employees as thriving, struggling or suffering based on how they evaluate their current and future lives. Global thriving improved by one point to 34% in 2025, the first increase in three years. In the U.S., thriving fell to 46% in Q4 2025, its lowest level since 2022. Career wellbeing — liking what you do and being motivated to achieve — is the most foundational element. In the absence of a fulfilling career, Gallup finds there is no Net Thriving.
Build a Workplace Where High Performance Is Sustainable
Burnout, declining wellbeing, and disengagement are productivity problems, and they have the same root cause: how people are managed. Gallup works with organizations to build the management practices, measurement systems and wellbeing strategies that make high performance sustainable over time.
Contact us to learn how we can help.