Managing Burnout: How to Save Your Team After a Layoff
Your team is already down two people after the recent layoffs. Now, it’s Friday morning, and your top performer just asked for a one-on-one. You know what’s coming—and you’re right. They’re leaving.
You’re heartbroken. Maybe even a little angry—an emotion you typically avoid. With an already understaffed team, losing your best employee feels devastating. You’re left wondering: How can we meet client expectations, deliver on contracts, and hit deadlines without burning ourselves out?
This is happening everywhere. You’re not alone.
This scenario is playing out in organizations everywhere. In the wake of layoffs, businesses quietly eliminated roles—one here, one there—and expected the remaining employees to absorb the extra work. But there’s a cost. Even the most committed employees can only carry so much before burnout sets in.
Can you prevent employee burnout after a layoff?
At first, they may try to power through. But over time, exhaustion builds, and eventually, they give notice or worse, stay and show signs of disengagement and resentment.
If your team experiences a layoff, here’s what you can do.
Reevaluate your work capacity and each individual's workload.
Advocate for letting the less impactful tasks go. With fewer people, you cannot keep doing the same amount of work without suffering the negative long-term impacts (turnover, mental health, team culture, contempt).
Get curious about more efficient ways of doing business. Adopt new tools, streamline processes, and inspect everything to look for ways to be more efficient with the talent and capacity that you have remaining on your team.
If that doesn’t make an impact on workloads, consider letting go of some of the lower-margin work. Yes, I said it. If you're over capacity and burning your team out, you do have the option to let go of or delay work that is not as profitable.
How to advocate for a more reasonable workload for your team
You don’t want to be a wave maker in the workforce. Being a team player and helping out during difficult times is part of the gig, right? Also, it feels easier to say “yes” to every ask. But letting burnout silently spread through your team with unreasonable workloads is far more risky than speaking up.
✅ Stay Visible
Check in frequently and ask your team how they’re doing. Make space for real conversations—not just project updates. If someone is overwhelmed, help them prioritize or escalate the issue.
✅ Speak Honestly
Your own manager may assume things are fine. Don’t downplay the impact of being understaffed. Use specific examples to show how workloads have increased and what the consequences might be (missed deadlines, low morale, disengagement).
✅ Use Data to Tell the Story
Whenever possible, back up your concerns with data. This could include:
Timesheet analysis or utilization reports
Project timelines slipping
Increased customer response times
Time studies conducted by the team
Even simple metrics—like calendar overload or missed deadlines—can paint a powerful picture.
✅ Escalate If Needed
If your manager isn’t responsive, schedule a conversation with their leader or another senior stakeholder. You’re not being difficult—you’re being responsible.
✅ Understand the Risk of Silence
Yes, speaking up can feel vulnerable. But so is losing your best employee—and your team’s trust. Choose your vulnerability: proactive advocacy or reactive damage control.
What Is a Reasonable Workload?
Reasonable workloads vary across industries and company cultures. In some workplaces, 50% utilization is the norm. In others, anything under 90% is unacceptable.
Don’t get stuck chasing an arbitrary benchmark. Instead, look at the lived experience of your team:
Are calendars filled with back-to-back meetings?
Are people working nights or weekends just to keep up?
Is there any time left for strategic thinking or team development?
These are red flags that workloads are unsustainable, regardless of the official targets.
Tools to measure workload
Almost everyone you talk to will vocalize that their workload is too much. This takes some investigating to sleuth if that is accurate.
Review timesheets, hours tracked to client projects (if that exists), and if you don’t have this data, ask your team to do a 1-week time study where they track their hours to projects or tasks. If you do a time study, do not get too far into the weeks, track by the 30 minutes versus by the minute, and allow for some unproductive time. It’s unreasonable that employees won’t have some time in their day that is unproductive, such as a casual conversation with a coworker unrelated to a project (but still beneficial in terms of culture and team building!).
Use a project management tool like Asana to help get clarity about time management and productivity.
All data is helpful. Any data that you have about workload can be helpful, such as tracking customer interactions (calls, emails, chats), client engagement meetings, new sales meetings, and so on.
Just remember: Data rarely tells the full story. Pair the numbers with conversations to capture the human impact.
Final Thoughts
Burnout doesn’t always show up in dramatic ways. Sometimes, it sneaks in slowly—through late nights, missed lunches, and team members who stop sharing ideas.
Being proactive in communicating and adjusting workloads isn’t just good leadership—it’s essential to protecting your team, your business, and yourself.
Have you experienced this on your team? What steps have you taken to manage workload after a layoff? Drop your thoughts below—I’d love to hear from you.
