How HR can tackle the chronic job stressors behind employee burnout

It may be 2026, but many HR leaders are still facing some of the workplace issues they hoped to leave in 2025.

Burnout, for example, continues to plague the workplace, due to systemic and chronic issues, according to Christina Maslach, psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs.

Maslach shared with HR Brew takeaways from her 2022 book on burnout, and why these issues still persist today.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you hope HR pros will learn from your book?

The book is about what I think needs to be understood about burnout and what to do about it, and that’s really to realize that it is a response to chronic job stressors that haven’t been successfully managed…that means you really need to look at the relationship, the fit, or the misfit, or match mismatch between people and their workplace, because that’s where the problems lie.

We’ve been able to identify six areas of worklife in which that mismatch between the person and the job seem to be particularly important for understanding why people experience job burnout. So, the book is really trying to give a clearer explanation about burnout and its causes, and then focusing on…What do we do about it? How do we respond? How do we make things better, reduce the risk?

What are those six areas of mismatch?

The first one, and this is one people always think of first, but sometimes only, and that’s workload. And, so, the mismatch is between high demands and very low resources. So, you have a lot of work that’s supposed to get done on time, etc., and you [don’t have] enough time. You don’t have the tools…The second area is basically autonomy or control. How much say do you have about how you do your job? Can you course correct if things call for it? Can you adjust in some ways, if needed, or is it that you’re strictly controlled?

The third area has to do with positive feedback and reward, so when you do something well, do you get any thanks? Do you get any praise?...Does it lead to future opportunities? Does it lead to pay raises eventually…What we have found, by the way, in the research, is it’s not so much money and benefits, it’s recognition. That people know you were there, and we’re glad you did what you did.

The fourth area is the workplace community, so community, meaning, who are the other people that you work with or for, or whose paths you cross on a regular basis. And, if you’re working in an environment that people describe as socially toxic, it means there’s no trust. There’s no support. People are out to kind of throw each other under the bus. You don’t really know who to turn to if you need help or advice.

Then, the fifth area has to do with fairness. Whatever the job is, whatever the rules, the guidelines, policy, the practice, is it done fairly, or is there favoritism? [Are] there glass ceilings? Discrimination? And, that can breed a lot of the cynicism of burnout when it’s an unfair workplace. And, then finally, what we have found is a sixth area that we’ve called values. Some people might call it meaning or purpose, but essentially, are you doing something that you’re proud of, that you feel good about, that is in line with what you think is right?

Those are the six areas, and many of those have been studied by many other people for decades before I even got to them. So, there’s a long history that these workplace characteristics are critical for people to be able to work well and feel good about what they’re doing.

Has anything changed since your book came out in 2022?

I don’t think things have changed a lot in terms of what we know about job burnout, but unfortunately, people, despite the research, despite the work by multiple people…People keep medicalizing burnout as an individual illness or problem, and so blame the person for having burnout and saying, “What’s wrong with you? You’ve got to fix it. You’ve got to take care of yourself.” And, not really focusing on the other part of the question, which is those chronic job stressors in the workplace.

It’s not just about the individual. It’s about people and the situation in which they’re working, and if you’re going to do something to actually make a difference in a positive direction, you have to focus on what’s causing it in the workplace and not just blame the victim and point a finger…That’s what I see as the major problem.