How to Know If Your Team Is Burned Out: 5 Signs Managers and Leaders Shouldn’t Ignore
About the Author
Oxygen is a modern management training company that helps high-performing employees become high-impact managers. Our cohort-based programs are designed to give managers the real-world tools, skills, and support they need to lead with confidence, improve team performance, and reduce burnout. We’ve helped hundreds of fast-growing companies build stronger teams, one manager at a time. Follow us on LinkedIn @Oxygen.
Overview
Burnout doesn’t always show up as visible stress. Sometimes, it’s quiet: low morale, missed deadlines, or a team that’s suddenly disengaged. In this post, we break down five early signs your team may be at risk for burnout and how to recognize them before things escalate. You’ll learn how to spot red flags like chronic overwork, increased errors, and emotional withdrawal, and why they’re often symptoms of deeper issues with team culture and leadership.
We’ve also included a free, research-backed Burnout Risk Quiz for Managers to help you evaluate your team’s current state and get actionable tips to prevent burnout before it leads to turnover. If you’re seeing signs of strain or want to proactively support your team’s well-being, this post is a must-read.
How to Know If Your Team Is Burning Out
Burnout isn’t always loud. It doesn’t always look like someone crying in a meeting or storming out after a tough quarter.
Sometimes, burnout shows up as silence. A team that stops raising concerns. A project that gets done, but without any energy behind it. A group of high performers who suddenly feel like they’re running on fumes.
Team burnout is one of the most common and costly challenges managers face. According to the Harvard Business Review, more than 50% of managers feel burned out. And it often goes unnoticed until it’s already taken a toll on your people (and your company’s results).
If you want to protect your team’s well-being, productivity, and trust, start by learning to spot the early signs. Here are five key indicators your team may be burned out, along with a quick way to measure their risk level.
1. Your Team’s Work Pace Is Unsustainable
Every team goes through intense periods. But if long hours, skipped breaks, and constant urgency have become the new normal, stress can turn into burnout fast.
High expectations are fine. But when your team feels like they can’t ever slow down, that’s a sign their current pace isn’t sustainable. Chronic overwork leads to physical and mental exhaustion, which in turn affects focus, creativity, and performance.
2. Your Team Feels Unmotivated and Disengaged
Burned out teams don’t always look visibly stressed. In fact, they might just seem… quiet.
Maybe they’ve stopped offering new ideas. Maybe no one celebrates wins. Maybe meetings feel more like check-the-box activities than real conversations.
When motivation and morale start to drop—and no one’s talking about why—it’s worth digging deeper.
3. You’re Noticing More Errors and Missed Deadlines
When stress builds up, people make more mistakes. Attention to detail fades, communication slips, and small issues become bigger ones.
If your team is suddenly missing deadlines or making errors that feel out of character, don’t assume it’s a performance problem. It could be a capacity problem, or a sign that burnout is interfering with how your team operates.
4. Employees Avoid Talking About Workload and Stress
In high-trust teams, people can share when they’re overwhelmed. But in burned out teams, those conversations often disappear.
If no one on your team has mentioned stress, capacity, or workload in the past few months, it may not mean everything is fine. It may mean they don’t feel safe bringing it up, or they’ve already disengaged.
Creating space for honest check-ins is one of the best ways to reduce burnout before it escalates.
5. You Suspect Burnout Is Fueling Turnover Risk
Ever had a gut feeling that someone on your team is thinking about leaving?
Burnout is one of the leading reasons employees quit, especially when they feel unsupported or overwhelmed. If you’re worried about retention, or if someone recently left due to stress, take that as a cue to step back and assess how your full team is doing.
How Burned Out Is Your Team, Really?
If a few of these signs hit close to home, you’re not alone. Burnout is common, but it’s not inevitable.
To help you get a clearer picture, we created a quick, research-backed Burnout Risk Quiz for Managers. It takes just 2 minutes and gives you a score based on how your team is doing (plus tips for what to do next).
🎯 Take the Burnout Risk Quiz Now
After completing the quiz, you’ll receive:
A Burnout Risk Score
A summary of what it means for your team
Resources to help reduce burnout and build a healthier team culture
Support Your Team with Oxygen
Oxygen’s Management Essentials program equips you with the tools and training to lead effectively, set healthy team norms, and prevent burnout before it starts.
If you're seeing signs of strain, or just want to build stronger, more resilient teams, we’re here to help. Schedule a call to see if Oxygen is a fit.
FAQs About Burnout at Work
What are the early signs of burnout in a team?
Some of the most common signs include low energy, increased mistakes, lack of motivation, silence around stress, and a constant feeling of urgency.
How do I know if my team is burned out?
The best way is to observe changes in behavior and performance over time. You can also take a team burnout quiz, like Oxygen’s Burnout Risk Quiz, for a structured way to evaluate key signals.
What causes employee burnout?
Burnout is often caused by sustained pressure, lack of clarity, limited support, and a culture where breaks or boundaries aren’t respected.
How can I reduce burnout on my team?
Start by checking in regularly, encouraging recovery time, setting clear priorities, and modeling healthy work habits. Management training and capacity planning can also help.
