Work Overload: The Psychosocial Risk Defining 2026

Work overload is shaping up to be one of the defining psychosocial risks for organisations in 2026.

Across our work at Psychological Safety Australia, it’s the issue weheard most consistently in 2025. When delivering psychosocial risk managementworkshops to more than 2,500 leaders across federal, state, and localgovernments, manufacturing, energy, insurance, professional services,technology, and primary industries, one hazard came up again and again.

When asked to reflect on the biggest psychosocial risks facing their teams, work overload was almost always ranked number one.

This isn’t just anecdotal. It reflects a broader pattern emerging inworkforce data, both in Australia and internationally.

From the “Great Resignation” to the GreatBurnout

While the much-predicted “great resignation” didn’t take hold inAustralia in the way many expected post-COVID, the “great burnout” certainlydid.

Following COVID, Australian workers were reporting poorer physical and mental health across all age groups, with prime-aged workers (those aged 25–55) experiencing the highest levels of burnout. This group is often balancing peak career demands alongside family, caregiving, and financial pressures, a combination that can amplify workload strain.

A similar picture is emerging overseas. Analysis of Glassdoordiscussions in the United States shows a sharp increase in references toburnout. Although there was a clear spike during COVID, another noticeableuptick appeared again in 2025, suggesting this is not a temporary post-pandemiceffect.

More recent data from Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index paints an evenclearer picture. Drawing on an enormous dataset, the report shows:

• One in four workers are online reviewing emails from 6am
• 29% are checking emails again at 10pm
• Evening meetings have increased by 16% year on year
• One in five employees are actively working through their weekends

Add to this the cognitive load of constant interruptions. Workers are interrupted every two minutes, up to 275 times per day, receive more than 150 Teams messages, and process over 100 emails daily.

It’s little wonder that, for many people, work feels like it never truly ends.

What’s Driving Work Overload?

There’s no single cause of work overload. Instead, it’s emerging from acomplex mix of structural, organisational, and cultural factors.

Some of these are outside the immediate control of leaders and teams. Downsizing has meant many organisations are asking people to maintain the samelevel of output with fewer full-time resources. Ongoing organisational changehas created uncertainty and required continual adaptation to new systems andways of working.

These “uncontrollables” can leave leaders feeling as though they havevery few levers available to improve people’s experience of workload.

But not all contributors to work overload are fixed.

Many factors that shape how workload is experienced, such as clarity, autonomy, support, coordination, and the way work is organised day to day, are influenceable. This is where good job design becomes critical. Rather than being limited to position descriptions or organisational charts, job design provides a framework for understanding people’s psychological needs at work,and how demands and resources interact to shape wellbeing and performance.

The Risk of Silent Overload

One of the biggest challenges in managing work overload is that it often goes unspoken.

For organisations, it’s not enough to know that workload is a risk. What really matters is understanding who is experiencing it, when, and why. That requires people to feel safe to speak up, without fear that raising concerns will harm their reputation, signal incompetence, or limit career opportunities.

When Elizabeth Broderick & Co conducted their independent review into workplace culture at EY, they identified a culture pattern that has been describedas silent overload. One respondent noted an “unwritten expectation for some people to work around the clock,” alongside a sense that being busycarried high status and was quietly rewarded.

People are highly attuned to the norms and unspoken expectations withintheir organisations. When long hours, constant availability, and overextensionare role-modelled by leaders, speaking up about overload can feel risky. Overtime, this can lead to what has been described as “quiet cracking”, wherepeople continue to perform outwardly while privately burning out.

From a psychosocial risk perspective, silent overload is particularlydangerous. If no one sees the risk, no one manages it, until it shows up asinjury, illness, turnover, or failure.

What Can Organisations Do?

There is no single fix for work overload, but there are clear areaswhere organisations can act.

First, build leaders’ capability in job design.
Work overload isn’t just about high demands; it’s also about insufficientresources to meet those demands. Leaders play a critical role in shaping accessto psychosocial resources such as support, clarity, autonomy, and connection.Understanding how these factors operate gives leaders evidence-based leversthey can use in everyday management, not just during restructures or formalredesigns.

Supportive leadership and flourishing team cultures don’t eliminate workload, but they significantly buffer how it is experienced.

Second, address inefficient work practices.
Many organisations are now recognisng that inefficiency isn’t just aproductivity issue, it’s a mental health issue. Meeting overload, poor emailetiquette, and excessive duplication of communication often push people to dotheir “real work” after hours. Well-intentioned inclusivity (inviting everyoneto everything, copying everyone into everything) can unintentionally driveoverload.

Third, strengthen psychological safety around workload risk.
Psychological safety is about whether people feel safe to be honest about risks,including workload, trusting that doing so will lead to problem-solving ratherthan personal cost. When people can speak openly, workload risks become visible, decisions become more accurate, and early intervention becomespossible.

Finally, support leaders to manage risk, not just performance.
Leaders are often caught between delivering targets and protecting their teams.Managing work overload requires confidence to raise concerns upward, challengeunrealistic expectations, and push back when deadlines, KPIs, or resourcingdecisions create psychosocial risk. For this to work, leaders also need to feelsafe that raising these issues won’t reflect poorly on them.

A Risk Organisations Can No Longer Ignore

With recent changes to WHS legislation and growing recognition that workoverload is a clear psychosocial hazard, organisations can no longer afford tolook the other way.

Work overload isn’t just about individual resilience or time management.It’s about how work is designed, led, and governed, and whether organisations are willing to treat psychological health and safety as a core risk managementresponsibility.

If 2026 is shaping up to be the year of work overload, the questionisn’t whether organisations will face this risk, but how proactively andthoughtfully they choose to manage it.

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