Why burnout just became a business problem — and where ERG’s can fit in

Vol. 24, Issue 3

July 23, 2026

Well, I must admit something. The first time a client mentioned her company’s ERG to me, I had no idea what she was talking about.

It was early in the pandemic. Everyone had gone remote, and my inbox, which used to be full of speaker requests that I mostly understood, was suddenly bringing me language that I didn’t.

So, I just asked her: What’s an ERG? She laughed and told me — an Employee Resource Group. That is a community built inside a company around something its members share like being a working parent, caregiving, mental health, men’s health, women’s health. I’d been serving corporate wellness initiatives for years without realizing there was a name — and a whole structure — for exactly the audiences I was already reaching.

That was a few years ago. Since then, ERGs have quietly become one of the most important tools companies have for one important problem that isn’t going anywhere— and, it turns out, one of the steadiest parts of my business.

That problem is employee burnout.

Burnout Is a Business Problem

For years, employee well being lived in the “nice to have” column — a lunch-and-learn here, a subscription to a meditation app there. But that era is over. In 2026, burnout is no longer just a problem to be managed by HR. It’s a line item, a productivity drag, and a retention risk that shows up in the numbers. The organizations pulling ahead are the ones treating it that way.

Here’s what the latest workforce data is telling us — and why, if there’s an Employee Resource Group already sitting inside your company, it may be the most underused tool you have with which to do something about it.

The Shift, in Plain Terms

55% of U.S. workers are currently experiencing burnout — the highest share in years, according to Eagle Hill Consulting (reported in Ipsos, November 2025). And employee engagement is dropping as burnout increases. Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest point since 2020, marking the first two-year decline Gallup has ever recorded and translating to roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity worldwide (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2026).

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Wellness in the Age of AI

And what’s growing in adaptation and intensity could be even more foreboding: a good share of that intensification is coming from the very tool that was supposed to relieve it: Artificial Intelligence.

Frequent AI users report burnout at a rate of 45%, compared with 35% of non-users (UC Berkeley). Researchers are calling the underlying dynamic the “Cognitive Crunch” — as AI speeds up decisions and shortens the time between one task and the next, focus time drops, and the mental space people need to think, reflect, and recover keeps shrinking even as the pace keeps increasing.

It’s showing up most notably in the people that companies can least afford to lose right now. Gallup finds that manager engagement dropped from 27% to 22% in a single year (2024–2025). The people responsible for helping their teams through this moment are, themselves, running on empty. That’s exactly the kind of gap that a well-aimed ERG session — one built for people-leaders specifically — is perfectly designed to close.

 

Why ERGs Are the Right Delivery Vehicle

Employee Resource Groups already have what most well-being initiatives try to manufacture: trust, community, and a built-in audience that shows up voluntarily. A caregiver ERG. A women’s network. A mental-health alliance. A group for early-career employees. These aren’t mailing lists — they’re communities of people who’ve raised their hands to belong.

The effect of that? In an ERG setting, the message comes through a group that an employee already trusts, it doesn’t feel like a corporate directive. It feels like support. That makes an ERG the ideal group in which to deliver well being content that lands.

And because ERGs map so cleanly onto real human concerns — burnout, confidence, mental health, resilience — you can match a specific topic to the specific audience that needs it instead of broadcasting one generic “wellness” message to everyone.

The market is moving in this direction, too. Clients are increasingly starting with a business objective before they ever pick a topic or a speaker. They want sessions tied to practical, on-the-job behavior, and content that keeps working after the event through follow-up discussions and manager conversations. A well-run ERG webinar series checks every one of those boxes.

 

What This Looks Like in Practice

Lately I’ve noticed a pattern developing: an ERG starts with a single webinar to test the waters; that one produces engagement beyond expectations – high attendance, audience engagement, and numerous views of the recording, and then it grows into something ongoing.

One example — a regional Midwest bank’s ERG brought in a speaker for a single session on caregiving. Attendance and feedback were strong enough that they came back and built a six-month series around it, working through succeeding topics: kindness and authenticity, mental health, confidence, self-esteem, resilience, and breast cancer awareness. Each topic mapped to a concern that had been voiced by both management and the participants, and each was delivered remotely by a different expert.

Another example — a national nurses’ organization serving front-line clinicians has put on a well being webinar series with us for three years running, returning season after season with various topics, and continuously addressing resilience and burnout. In a profession where burnout is common, that repeating partnership is the clearest signal I can offer that this format works.

Neither group needed a giant budget or a culture overhaul. They needed the right experts in a setting of trust, in front of the right community, on the right topic, at regular intervals that their people could count on.

 

The Expertise Behind the Topics

The reason these series have renewed is that the speakers offered solutions to several aspects of the deeper problem. A burnout problem isn’t solved by one motivational keynote delivered on Wednesday that fades by Friday — it’s more effectively addressed by specialists who connect their subjects to many aspects of what people are actually living through.

On burnout, stress, and resilience specifically, I offer a range of experts like Thandi Montgomery on creating a resilient mindset. And because resilience and burnout don’t exist in a vacuum, the surrounding topics matter just as much. For example, Kari Berit  on caregiving, Tami West on mental health, Linda Cohen on kindness and authenticity, Sharon Delaney McLoud on confidence, Darcy Lord on self-esteem, and Sarah McDonald on breast cancer awareness. Across my roster of carefully vetted health and wellness speakers, the selection makes it possible to match the experts to the problems your people are having now.

Where to Start

If you notice burnout showing up in your engagement scores, your turnover, or just the low energy in your meetings, your ERGs offer the most natural ways to respond — and you don’t have to design the response by yourself.

Email or, better yet, call me, and let’s talk about the loads your people are carrying and which voices could meet them where they are. A short discovery call is enough to map out a series that fits your ERGs, your calendar, and your goals.

Ready to build something your people will be happy to show up for and that your organization’s bottom line will notice? Email me at barbara@speakwellbeing.com or text/call 971-207-0581.

Coming up: Next issue, we’ll zoom in on caregiving, a topic that, like AI burnout, is an invisible workload that’s quietly running in the background. A caregiving employee is like an AI-burdened employee in that both are quietly absorbing more than their job description accounts for. And with October on the horizon, we’ll talk about Breast Cancer Awareness Month as ERG programming.

Until next time, take care of yourself for your well being and those you love.

Barbara

For Your Well Being is published with the intention of bringing you insider speaker reports, exclusive stories about special events around the country, meeting planner tips, and fun stuff from the worlds of health and well-being. Be well and be in the know!

The Speak Well Being Group is a specialized speakers bureau, focusing on health and wellness for all types of organizations that want to foster health and well-being for their employees, members, clients, and in their communities.

Our speakers are hand-selected. They are not only experts in their fields; they connect with their audiences while bringing them life-changing information, smiles of recognition, and ultimately a sense of well-being and hope.

Finding the perfect keynote speaker for your special event or conference is my personal passion, not just once, but year after year. It brings me great joy to know that your audience was delighted and moved by the speaker we selected together. I’m committed to making the process easy, pleasant and fun.