We’ve all heard the refrain: do more with less. It’s become the default operating mode for most organizations over the past few years. Headcount freezes. Hiring slowdowns. Restructuring. The phrase “lean teams” gets tossed around in board meetings and all-hands calls like it’s a badge of honour, proof that leadership is being strategic, disciplined, and responsible.
But here’s what no one is saying out loud: running lean teams isn’t a strategy. It’s a state of being. And if you’re not careful, it becomes a slow bleed that costs you far more than the salaries you didn’t approve.
I’m not here to argue against efficiency. Smart companies should always question whether they have the right people in the right roles. But there’s a difference between running efficiently and running employees into the ground. Right now, too many organizations have crossed that line without realizing it.
The conversation around retention has dominated HR and leadership discussions for years. We track turnover rates, conduct exit interviews, and calculate the cost of replacing talent. All important. But we’re so focused on who’s leaving that we’ve stopped paying attention to who’s staying and what it’s costing them to do so.
The Hidden Cost of Employee Burnout and Overwork
When someone leaves and the role goes unfilled, the work doesn’t disappear. It gets redistributed over time, with extra responsibilities folded into someone’s existing workload. At first, it seems manageable because people step up and help the team keep moving forward.
But six months later, that temporary redistribution has become permanent. The team has absorbed the workload of one, sometimes two, missing colleagues. No one explicitly decided this was the new normal. It just became the path of least resistance. And the people carrying that extra weight are tired, stretched thin, and operating at a level that isn’t sustainable.
This is where the real cost lives. You can see it in delayed projects, in quality that slips just slightly, in the growing number of emails that go unanswered because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. You can feel it in meetings where people look worn down, where creativity takes a back seat to just getting things done.
According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion annually, representing roughly 9% of global GDP. The problem is getting worse: 82% of employees report being at risk of burnout, with burnout costing businesses an estimated $322 billion annually in lost productivity.
We measure the cost of turnover in dollars: recruiting fees, onboarding time, lost productivity. Replacing a single employee can cost anywhere from one-half to two times their annual salary. Want to see what turnover is actually costing your organization? Calculate your employee turnover costs →
But how do we measure the cost of an overworked team that’s still showing up every day? The answer is, we don’t. And that’s a problem.
Why Employee Wellbeing Delivers ROI Beyond Retention
Most organizations think about employee wellbeing as a retention tool: keep people happy so they don’t leave. It’s a defensive posture, reactive rather than proactive. But the real ROI of supporting your people isn’t about preventing turnover. It’s about unlocking performance.
Think about it this way.
Lean teams can be healthy, focused, and efficient. But when a team is pushed to the edge of capacity or past it, something changes. People shift into survival mode. They manage tasks instead of solving problems. They execute what’s in front of them rather than thinking about what could be better. The work that actually moves the business forward starts to slip, not because people don’t care, but because there’s no space left to do it.
Now consider what happens when people have space to think. When they’re not buried under an unmanageable workload. When they can step back and see patterns, anticipate problems, and propose solutions. That’s where your competitive advantage lives: in creating conditions where your best people can do their best work.
Research from Gallup shows that highly engaged teams see a 23% increase in profitability and a 51% decrease in turnover. They also experience a 68% improvement in employee wellbeing and a 63% decrease in safety incidents. This isn’t a soft argument about morale. It’s a hard business case about output quality, decision-making speed, and strategic agility.
Overworked teams make more mistakes. They miss opportunities. They solve for the immediate problem without considering second and third order effects. Over time, that adds up.
What Leadership Gets Wrong About Sustainable Workload
Here’s where most executives stumble: they assume their teams will tell them when things are unsustainable. They assume that if someone is truly overwhelmed, they’ll raise their hand and ask for help.
But that’s not how it works. People don’t want to seem incapable. They don’t want to admit they can’t handle what’s been asked of them. In organizations that pride themselves on being lean and efficient, there’s often an unspoken expectation that you should be able to manage whatever comes your way. So people stay quiet, push through, and burn out slowly.
A survey from NAMI found that 62% of employees who feel uncomfortable discussing mental health at work also report feeling burned out. The problem hits experienced workers hardest: both “Experienced” and “Manager”-level employees report higher burnout rates (54%) compared to entry-level employees (40%).
As a leader, you can’t wait for people to tell you there’s a problem. You have to look for the signs yourself. Are projects taking longer than they used to? Is quality declining in ways that are hard to pinpoint? Are people less engaged in meetings, less willing to volunteer for new initiatives? These aren’t personality issues. They’re symptoms of a system under strain.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you’re running lean teams and you’re not actively investing in their capacity, you’re not being strategic. You’re being shortsighted. Eventually, something breaks. Either people leave, or they stay and become shadows of the employees you hired. Neither outcome serves the business.
How to Lead Lean Teams as a Strategic Advantage
Running lean can be a legitimate strategy, but only if it’s supported from the top. That means more than lip service about work-life balance or mental health days. It means making hard choices about what gets prioritized and what gets cut. It means saying no to projects that would stretch the team beyond sustainable limits. It means investing in tools, processes, and support systems that help people work smarter, not just longer.
Most importantly, it means recognizing that your people are not an infinite resource. You can’t keep adding to their plates and expect the same level of performance. At some point, the math stops working.
Start with a clear view of capacity. Look at what your team can actually handle, not what you hope they could handle. This requires regular, honest conversations about workload, not just once a year during reviews. It also means creating an environment where people can say, “This isn’t sustainable,” without fear of being labelled underperforming.
Prioritize ruthlessly. If you’re running with fewer people, you can’t do everything. What’s essential? What can wait? What should you stop doing altogether? These aren’t easy questions, and they require leadership to make calls that won’t please everyone. But clarity about priorities is one of the greatest gifts you can give a lean team. It lets people focus their energy where it matters most.
Invest in the right places. That might mean automation tools that take manual work off people’s plates, bringing in contractors for specific projects, or rethinking workflows for efficiency. The principle is the same: if you’re asking people to do more, give them the resources to do it well. Organizations with comprehensive retention strategies achieve 87% higher employee retention rates and 67% lower recruitment costs.
Model the behaviour you want to see. If you’re sending emails at midnight and working weekends, your team will do the same, even if you tell them not to. If you’re constantly adding last-minute requests without considering the downstream impact, they’ll assume that’s the standard. Leadership sets the tone. Gallup research shows that 70% of the variance in team engagement is attributable to the manager.
Building Resilient Teams: The Real Competitive Advantage
There’s a narrative in business that toughness wins. That the companies willing to push harder, demand more, and operate with fewer resources will come out ahead. Maybe that’s true in the very short term. But over time, the leanest teams don’t win. The most resilient ones do.
Resilience doesn’t come from doing more with less. It comes from building systems and cultures where people can sustain high performance over the long haul, where they have the support they need to navigate complexity, adapt to change, and keep contributing at a high level year after year.
In 2026, the organizations that will thrive are the ones that recognize their people as the finite, valuable resource they are and invest accordingly. That investment isn’t charity. It’s not a nice-to-have perk. It’s a fundamental business decision that shapes everything from your ability to execute strategy to your capacity for innovation.
So yes, run lean if that’s what your business requires. But don’t confuse efficiency with extraction. Don’t assume that because people are still showing up, everything is fine. And don’t wait until your best employees walk out the door to start asking whether you’re giving them what they need to succeed.
The ROI you’re not tracking, the performance you’re leaving on the table, the opportunities you’re missing, is sitting right in front of you. It’s in the people who stayed. The question is whether you’re going to invest in them before it’s too late.
Ready to quantify what’s at stake? If you’re running lean and want to understand the true cost of losing your people, our free calculator can help you build the business case for investing in the team you have. Calculate your turnover costs
