What happened
A mental fitness practitioner argues that workplaces quietly reward endurance: long hours, staying available, pushing through. In a piece reported by Talent Canada, the author says endurance without recovery is not resilience. It is risk, a slow overdraft of emotional, cognitive and physical reserves.
The article cites Mental Health Research Canada's 2025 data. Nearly 39 per cent of Canadian employees report feeling burnt out. Burnout costs employers between $5,500 and $28,500 per employee per year in lost productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism and turnover-related costs.
The author says performance quality slips before attendance does. Focus narrows, errors rise and people react instead of reflecting. Irritability is an early warning sign and still carries energy. Apathy is later and more serious, and it is when decline speeds up. The piece recommends spotting the pattern early, asking for adjustments sooner and protecting energy, not just time.
Why it matters if you are hiring
Burnout rarely shows up as a resignation first. It shows up as rework, missed details and a good person who has gone flat. In a tight hiring market, that is expensive, because replacing a skilled employee takes months and the vacancy lands on the people who are already stretched.
The roles most exposed are the ones where one person carries a lot: finance leads at month-end, plant supervisors covering short shifts, operations coordinators, and sales managers with open territories. If your team is thin, the answer is often capacity, not another wellness reminder.
This also affects how you hire. Candidates ask about workload and coverage more openly now. A team that runs on heroics is harder to recruit into and harder to keep.
The $5,500 to $28,500 range is a per-employee figure across all costs. Even at the low end, a team of 20 is a large number that rarely appears as one line in a budget.
One thing to do this week
List the three people on your team who have worked the most overtime or covered the most gaps over the past 60 days. Talk to each of them about what could come off their plate, and decide whether a contract hire or temporary cover would remove the strain before it turns into apathy or an exit.
Traverse helps employers find contract and permanent people across operations, finance, manufacturing and more, so a stretched team gets relief before a good employee is lost.