Burnout is back.

According to a new report from the workforce research firm Gallagher [PDF], two-thirds of employers are concerned about stress and burnout within their organizations. The reasons for this aren’t hard to determine: political and economic uncertainty, along with rising concerns about what AI means for their jobs, is driving many to frustration. 

For leaders speaking to association members as well as their own staffs, it may be a good time to think about whether the current plans for addressing burnout are fit for purpose. Promises of promotion won’t do the trick: A recent study found that 65 percent of U.S. workers say they’ve experienced “ghost growth”—promises of advancement but not actual changes in pay or responsibilities.

“Wellness” tools may not be doing the trick either. Writing at MIT Sloan Management Review, workplace expert Brian Elliott recently characterized many of those initiatives as “trying to treat third-degree burns with first-degree salves.”

The problem, Elliott points out, is one of balance: Workers are compelled to do so much when it comes to performing their job duties that little time or energy is left for them to shift into what he describes as “grow mode.” “Many leaders and others who veer toward burnout skew heavily toward performance, to their detriment,” he writes. “They spend an extra-high percentage of their time doing what they already know, and too little time learning anything new.”

As a solution, Elliott suggests that leaders work to carve out spaces where people can develop their growth: setting boundaries on when it’s OK (and not) to call meetings and email requests, get clear on goals, and offer meaningful professional development. 

Some of that training needs to happen with the leaders themselves. According to the Gallagher report, less than a fourth (24 percent) of organizations “offer mental health training for managers, leaders, or HR.” That kind of training can better equip leaders to know when their people are overwhelmed by stress.

And association leaders can do much the same for their members, speaking out to organizations in high-stress industries highlighting the importance of well-being and providing practical guidance around it. It’s not hard to identify the kinds of industries where those concerns are most acute: Federal employees, frontline healthcare workers, construction, and more. 

Models of that kind of support exist: the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal workers, has launched webinar and training series around stress and burnout. The American Nurses Association has a Nurse Burnout Prevention Program that provides resources—and, better still, offers members CE hours for participating. 

These efforts have the practical benefit of improving retention, and helping leaders avoid going through the trouble of regularly filling job absences. But it should also have the deeper goal of creating a healthy environment where people are doing better, more gratifying work. As Elliott writes, the goal is to create “conditions that support sustainable high performance rather than burning through talent. The companies that figure this out won’t just retain their best people — they’ll unlock performance levels that seemed impossible under the old paradigm of grinding harder.”