The Burnout-Engagement Paradox: Why Your Most Productive Employees Are Quietly Cracking

When I collapsed during that investor meeting seven years ago, I was checking every box on my company’s engagement survey. High commitment? Check. Clear understanding of company goals? Absolutely. Willingness to go above and beyond? That’s what landed me in the hospital.

The paradox of being both engaged and burning out nearly killed me. Now, new research from DHR Global shows I wasn’t alone—I was just early to a crisis that’s now affecting 82% of today’s workforce.

The Numbers That Should Terrify Every Leader

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Last November, DHR Global’s 2026 Workforce Trends Report dropped a bombshell that every leader needs to understand: 83% of employees report experiencing burnout, yet many of these same workers continue to show up as “engaged” on traditional metrics. Even more alarming, employee engagement plummeted from 88% to just 64% in a single year—while burnout rates remained stubbornly locked above 80%.

This isn’t about employees being dramatic or lacking resilience. This is about a fundamental blind spot in how we measure and understand workplace health.

The paradox manifests in ways that traditional leadership training never prepared us for. As Fortune reported on January 23, 2026, 44% of burned-out workers actually report feeling more engaged, not less. They’re coping with exhaustion by throwing themselves deeper into work—a strategy that’s sustainable until it suddenly isn’t.

“It isn’t necessarily that I’m burned out in the ‘I’m working 24 hours a day’ way, but ‘I’ve been doing the same general thing for five years, and it’s just not energizing me anymore,’” Ciara Harrington, Skillsoft’s Chief People Officer, explained in the Fortune article. This is what researchers are now calling “quiet burnout”—employees who appear productive but are running on empty.

Why Traditional Engagement Metrics Are Failing Us

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Here’s what I’ve learned from both my own breakdown and from working with thousands of leaders since: engagement surveys were designed for a different era. They measure commitment, clarity of purpose, and willingness to work hard—all metrics that can remain high even as someone approaches their breaking point.

DHR Global’s research reveals the scale of this measurement failure. While 77% of C-suite leaders say culture is “very important,” only 37% of entry-level employees agree. More tellingly, executives are 2.5 times more likely than entry-level staff to view their company’s culture as well-defined. This isn’t just a communication gap—it’s a fundamental disconnect about what’s actually happening on the ground.

The consequences are severe and quantifiable. According to SHRM’s research published in 2026, burned-out employees are three times more likely to leave their jobs than engaged counterparts. Gallup puts the global productivity cost of disengagement at $8.9 trillion annually. Yet companies continue to celebrate engagement scores while their best people plan their exits.

The Real Drivers Leaders Miss

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Traditional burnout prevention focuses on workload management and time off policies. But DHR’s data reveals something more insidious: the share of employees citing “lack of reward or recognition” as a top burnout driver nearly doubled in just one year, jumping from 17% to 32%.

This tracks with everything I see in leadership development work. The burnout crisis isn’t primarily about hours worked—it’s about feeling unseen, unvalued, and stuck. DHR Global found that 71% of employees cite learning and growth opportunities as their top engagement driver, surpassing both remote work options and AI tools.

Yet most organizations remain focused on the wrong levers. They offer meditation apps and mental health days while failing to address the structural issues: unclear AI strategies that leave 66% of employees uncertain about their future roles, return-to-office mandates that only 34% of workers support, and cultures that talk about balance while rewarding those who sacrifice it.

The tech industry offers an instructive paradox within the paradox. Despite reporting the highest burnout rates at 58%, tech workers also show the strongest engagement at 78%. What’s the difference? According to DHR’s research, 48% of tech employees say their workplace culture is well-defined and actively shapes their experience—nearly double the rate of other industries.

What Quiet Burnout Actually Looks Like

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After my hospitalization, I became obsessed with understanding the warning signs I’d missed in myself and others. Quiet burnout doesn’t look like the dramatic collapse I experienced. It’s far more subtle and therefore more dangerous.

Watch for employees who:

• Maintain high productivity metrics while withdrawing from collaborative efforts
• Complete assigned work reliably but stop volunteering ideas or taking initiative
• Show up to meetings but participate less actively than before
• Use more sick days while maintaining perfect attendance on critical deadlines
• Express enthusiasm about work while their body language tells a different story

These are your highest performers applying a survival strategy. They’re conserving energy by doing exactly what’s required—nothing more, nothing less. Traditional engagement surveys will likely show them as committed. Exit interviews will reveal they’ve been planning their departure for months.

The Leadership Response That Actually Works

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Here’s what I tell executives who are confronting this paradox: you can’t survey your way out of this problem, and you can’t delegate it to HR.

First, acknowledge the cognitive load of constant change. DHR’s research found that only 34% of employees say their organization has clearly communicated how AI will affect their roles. Your team isn’t just doing their jobs—they’re processing rapid technological change, economic uncertainty, and workplace model shifts while you measure their “engagement.” Name this reality explicitly.

Second, redefine what engagement looks like. Stop celebrating those who sacrifice boundaries for the company. As SHRM’s analysis notes, 75% of engaged employees feel encouraged to set healthy boundaries between work and personal life, compared to only 35% of disengaged employees. Model sustainable intensity, not martyrdom.

Third, make recognition frequent and specific. The near-doubling of “lack of recognition” as a burnout driver isn’t about insufficient praise—it’s about people feeling invisible despite their contributions. Alicia Roman, Senior Associate Dean at Columbia Climate School, put it perfectly: “Burnout isn’t just about the hours worked. It’s about the emotional toll of feeling unsupported while meeting those demands.”

Fourth, create genuine pathways for growth and change. When DHR Global asked employees what would most improve their experience, 71% chose learning and development opportunities. Your burned-out high performers aren’t necessarily looking for easier work—they’re craving new challenges, new skills, and visible career progression.

Finally, and most critically: ask better questions. Stop asking “Are you engaged?” Start asking “Do you have energy for what we’re asking of you?” Stop asking “How can we improve productivity?” Start asking “What’s draining you that isn’t showing up in our metrics?”

The Tight Labor Market Complication

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There’s one more dimension to this crisis that leaders need to understand: the role of economic pressure in masking burnout. DHR’s research found that 67% of respondents said a tight job market increases their engagement—not because they’re genuinely more committed, but because they feel trapped.

This creates a dangerous false sense of security. HR leaders who focus primarily on retention in a tight market may miss the warning signs until the job market opens up. As Skillsoft’s Ciara Harrington warns: “A burnt out employee maybe doesn’t have as many choices as they would have in a world where the market is more open. As the market opens up, we all have this window to get to those employees in advance of that and really understand: What would it take to get you more engaged?”

The employees who are quietly burning out right now will be the first to leave when opportunities emerge. The irony is brutal: the period when they seem most engaged and least likely to leave is actually when you have the shortest window to address their underlying exhaustion.

What I Wish I’d Known Then

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Looking back at my own collapse, I realize I’d spent years misunderstanding engagement. I thought being engaged meant always saying yes, always pushing harder, always proving my commitment through sacrifice. My company’s engagement surveys reinforced this—they measured my willingness to go above and beyond, my alignment with company goals, my commitment to excellence.

What they never measured was whether I had anything left to give.

The burnout-engagement paradox isn’t a measurement problem we can solve with better surveys. It’s a leadership problem that requires fundamentally rethinking what sustainable performance looks like. The organizations that get this right won’t just avoid the retention crisis coming as labor markets loosen—they’ll build cultures where people can sustain excellence for decades, not just until they burn out.

Your most engaged employees might be your most at-risk. The question isn’t whether you can afford to address this paradox. It’s whether you can afford not to.

References

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• DHR Global (November 18, 2025). “New DHR Global Report Reveals Drop in Employee Engagement as Burnout Persists.” https://www.dhrglobal.com/news/dhr-global-workforce-trends-report-2026/ (Accessed February 2, 2026)

• Fortune (January 23, 2025). “HR leaders are worried about a potentially dangerous combo: high burnout and high engagement.” https://fortune.com/2025/01/23/hr-leaders-worried-about-burnout-and-engagement/ (Accessed February 2, 2026)

• SHRM (2026). “Burnout Isn’t Personal — It’s Cultural. Here’s How Leaders Can Intervene.” https://www.shrm.org/enterprise-solutions/insights/burnout-isnt-personal-its-cultural-leaders (Accessed February 2, 2026)

• Hunt Scanlon Media (November 26, 2025). “Workforce Trends 2026: Leaders Confront Burnout, Disengagement, and AI-Driven Change.” https://huntscanlon.com/workforce-trends-2026-leaders-confront-burnout-disengagement-and-ai-driven-change/ (Accessed February 2, 2026)