27% of the C-Suite expect to quit their jobs in the next six months. Rising to 56% in the next two years. Why? Stress. 

This time, last year, HiBob reported that 70% of employees it surveyed were looking for a new job – again, due to stress and burnout. 

The new data from Gartner’s latest C-Suite Effectiveness Survey shows us that the effect of the ‘do more with less’ demand on people is breaking employees at every level of an organisation. Everyone, at every level, is struggling. 

MetLife UK reports that burnout could be costing British businesses £700m per year. In the US, Harvard Business Review estimates a whopping $125 billion dollars annually. The financial implications continue to be staggering. 

Isn’t it time organisations stop. And, instead, ‘do less with less’. Isn’t it time we stop running, pivoting, being more agile, saying yes before we ask why – and instead simply focus our time and energy on where we can make the most impact? 

This doesn’t mean organisations should be less ambitious, less driven, less determined. But, instead of saying employees should ‘work smarter, not harder’, let’s put actions behind those words. Let’s actually make it happen.  

Our client, Kimberly-Clark, is intentionally and methodically putting that into action. Dan Howell, who leads the UK&I division, firmly believes that executives need to bring unorthodox thinking to everyday problems. 

People are exhausted. They’re running through work and life in burnout. That’s why he encourages all employees to move from ‘maximum effort’ to ‘optimal effort’. It’s a dedicated focus on intentionally operating at a level of effort below our maximum capacity. In practice, this could mean simple measures, such as finishing meetings 15 minutes earlier, or complex ones, like challenging an organisational culture of perfectionism. Another way to look at it is, why give a task 100%, when sometimes 80% is good enough and will drive the same outcome. 

Our other client – a global food company – is also reworking its ways of working. The global transformation programme we’re working on with them will rejig its entire operations to better respond to employees’ ever-increasing volume of workload and overwhelm. The transformation focuses on having the right people, in the right meetings, at the right time, with more defined roles, making better informed decisions – instead of everyone, being everywhere, too reactive and spread too thin.  

We talk a lot about the need to build ‘resilience’. But does that imply organisations are too accepting of the always-on pace, ever-increasing volume and whirlwind of work being our everyday? It doesn’t need to be. It just needs forward thinking leaders, and motivated colleagues, who are ready to come together and find that ‘unorthodox’ way of working differently.  

I know a few. How about you? 

If you’d like to understand how we can help your organisation drive new behaviours, or hear more about our leadership communications programmes that include building better resilience, please get in touch.