Preventing Burnout at Work: The Manager’s Key Role
A manager and a team member walking side by side outside, talking
The risk factors for burnout are organisational. What a manager can settle alone, what has to be escalated in writing, and where the role stops.

News : In February 2026, at the initiative of one of its groups, the French Senate launched a fact-finding mission on psychological distress at work. After five months of hearings, rapporteur Annick Girardin delivered a report titled “When work consumes: the urgent need to fight burnout”, carrying 39 recommendations. On 8 July 2026, senators of the right and centre rejected its conclusions, which prevented its official publication (Public Senat, 8 July 2026). Whether or not that report ever appears changes nothing about what a manager can do on Monday morning about their team’s workload.

I work as a fractional HR director in small and mid-sized companies, and I train managers. This article is for the people who run a team and wonder what to do, at their own level, before someone goes off sick. I am talking about how work is organised, not about clinical detection.

Preventing burnout means acting on how work is organised before exhaustion sets in: adjusting the real workload, clarifying priorities, recognising the work actually done, leaving autonomy in the face of demands, and protecting recovery time. A manager settles what depends on them and escalates the rest, in writing.

Burnout risk factors are organisational first

Burnout does not set in because a person “copes badly”. It sets in when an organisation asks, for months, for more than it gives in means, room for manoeuvre and recognition. What the organisation builds, the organisation can also dismantle.

When I work inside a small company, I never start with the people. I look at how the work is distributed, who decides when two demands contradict each other, and what has changed since the last reorganisation. The same families of factors keep coming back:

  • Lasting overload. It is not the peak before stocktaking that exhausts people, it is the peak that never comes back down.
  • Absence of recognition. Never hearing that what you did was useful wears people out faster than a difficult file.
  • Loss of meaning. When the link between the work and its usefulness breaks, the effort is no longer offset.
  • Conflict of values. Having to do, repeatedly, work you judge badly done.
  • Contradictory demands. Be fast and be good, with nobody owning the trade-off.
  • Insufficient autonomy. High expectations and no latitude on how to meet them.

These factors are described in terms of work, not personality, and that is exactly where a manager’s action is legitimate. They overlap closely with the organisational causes of workplace stress.

What a manager observes, and what they have no business interpreting

This is the question that comes up most often when I run a session for managers: “how do I know if someone is struggling?” My answer does not move: burnout is not a diagnosis the manager makes. Its clinical detection belongs to doctors, who are the audience for the good practice guidance of the French national health authority (in French), not line managers.

What a manager can legitimately observe are lasting departures from a person’s usual way of working:

  • a gradual withdrawal from team exchanges, in someone who used to take part;
  • late-evening or weekend logins that have become systematic;
  • leave postponed, never taken, or taken and worked through;
  • a new difficulty in deciding, delegating or finishing what used to be routine;
  • short absences that keep repeating.

None of these points to a medical condition. They say only one thing: something is happening in this work. What you open then is a conversation about workload, not about health. The same reading rules apply to faint early signals.

Where my role stops. I am an HR professional, a trainer and a coach, not a doctor and not a psychologist. Nothing I write here allows anyone to assess anybody’s health. As soon as an individual situation is worrying, the referral routes are the occupational physician, the treating doctor or a psychologist. The French health insurance system keeps the directory of registered psychologists under the Mon soutien psy scheme at monsoutienpsy.ameli.fr, and an employee can request a visit with the occupational health service on their own initiative. In case of immediate danger in France, call 15; for acute psychological distress or suicidal thoughts, 3114, the national suicide prevention line, is free and open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Preventing burnout: five levers you can use from Monday

1. Settle the workload instead of spreading it

Spreading an impossible workload does not make it possible, only shared. Settling it means saying what will not be done, owning that, and writing it down. Keep the list of what was removed this quarter.

2. Make priorities explicit, and hold them

A priority that changes every week without anyone saying what it replaces amounts to no priority at all. Write the order down and read it back in meetings. When two contradictory demands come from two directors, it is not for the team member to decide between them.

3. Protect recovery time

Recovery is what stops an occasional overload from becoming attrition. In practice: leave that is booked and not nibbled away, meetings that do not run back to back without a break. What you send at 10pm sets the norm.

4. Give recognition for the real work

The recognition that protects is not the end-of-year compliment. It is naming what the indicators cannot see: the file rescued, the customer calmed, the workaround found for a failing tool.

5. Escalate what you cannot solve

A manager is responsible neither for structural understaffing nor for pay policy. They are responsible for not letting the problem die quietly on their own floor. Be factual: what is being asked, what is sustainable, the gap between the two. A dated written note beats a corridor conversation.

What is settled at your level, what has to go above you

Here is the grid I use with management teams. Without a clear boundary, a manager carries subjects outside their remit alone and burns out in turn.

Organisational risk factor What the manager can settle alone What has to go above them
Lasting overload Remove or postpone low-value tasks; refuse a request outside the remit Settled understaffing, a role left unfilled, a target held at reduced headcount
Contradictory priorities Decide within their own remit, write down the order of priorities Two directors commanding the same team with no shared arbitration
Absence of recognition Name the real work, make a success known beyond the team Job grading, pay policy, blocked mobility
Recovery time nibbled away Protect leave, space out meetings, set the example outside hours A norm of permanent availability, tools that notify continuously
Insufficient autonomy Give margin back on the “how”, involve the team in organisational decisions A process imposed by head office, a tool that cannot be configured, imposed reporting
Conflict of values Listen and document, adjust an instruction that depends on you A practice contested in substance, any ethical or legal subject
Lasting relational tension Address behaviour, set team rules Any situation suggesting harassment: management, HR, occupational health service

The manager is an exposed population too

The first thing I look at, when a director tells me their managers “are no longer keeping up”, is those managers’ own workload. The frontline manager absorbs the pressure coming from above and the tension coming from the team, and nobody has the job of looking at theirs.

In its Absenteeism study 2026, published on 9 June 2026, Malakoff Humanis reports that 53% of managers say they were prescribed at least one period of sick leave in 2025, and that absence rates among managerial staff are up 35.2% against 2019. Those figures do not describe fragility: they describe a position in the work.

The 2026 edition of the French quality of working life week, run by Anact from 15 to 19 June 2026, had as its theme “Managing is a job in itself”.

Preventing burnout does not rest on one line manager’s goodwill. It sits inside a framework, which I set out here as general markers:

  • Article L. 4121-1 of the French Labour Code (in French) sets the employer’s duty of care: protecting the physical and mental health of workers.
  • Article L. 4121-2 (in French) sets out the general prevention principles: avoid risks, combat them at source, adapt the work to the person, plan prevention.
  • Article R. 4121-1 (in French) requires the results of the risk assessment to be recorded in the single risk assessment document: psychosocial risks belong in it.
  • Article L. 4624-1 and following (in French) organise individual health monitoring and the occupational physician’s role.
  • Article L. 1152-1 (in French) defines workplace harassment, which is never handled at the level of the manager alone.

What I write here is a general marker; on a specific case, have it validated by an employment lawyer, the labour inspectorate or your occupational health service. I am an HR professional, not a lawyer. The French occupational health plan 2026-2030 (in French), presented on 5 June 2026, does list among its five priorities the promotion of mental health, a national cause for 2025-2026, and the prevention of psychosocial risks.

Two ways to equip a management team

When a management team asks me where to start, I offer two ways in, never in place of a prevention policy. First, mental health first aid training, two days run under the licence held by the PSSM France association: it teaches people to approach someone in difficulty and signpost them. I repeat it every time: a mental health first aider signposts, and does not treat. Second, a collective moment to open up conversation without singling anyone out: I run a workshop for talking about mental health at work, which puts the received ideas on the table before an individual case forces everyone to improvise.

What this article does not cover

  • Care. I have covered what comes before. Supporting someone already in serious difficulty, or preparing a return from long-term leave, belongs to other people.
  • Any assessment of health. Nothing here allows anyone to say a person “is burnt out”: that judgement belongs to a doctor.
  • Specific legal cases. Occupational illness, fitness for work, harassment, litigation: each requires specialist advice.
  • A diagnosis of your organisation. The factors listed are common; they are not yours until somebody has checked.
  • Emergencies. 15 for immediate danger in France, 3114 for suicide prevention.

FAQ

How do I prevent burnout when the workload comes from elsewhere?

You act on three things even without lifting the constraint: the trade-off (saying what will not be done), clarity (writing down the order of priorities) and recognition of the real work. For the rest, document the gap between what is asked and what is sustainable, then escalate it in writing. A problem that stays on your floor becomes yours.

Can a manager detect burnout in a team member?

No, and it is not their role. A manager can notice lasting changes in how a person works and open a conversation about the work. Labelling a state of health belongs to the occupational physician or the treating doctor. Confusing the two exposes the employee to a label they never asked for, and the manager to a responsibility that is not theirs.

What do I say to a team member I am worried about?

Talk about what you observe in the work, not what you assume about the person: “I see you have been logging on late for several weeks, how are you finding your workload?” Listen without concluding, ask what would concretely help, remind them the occupational physician can be approached freely. Then do what you said you would do.

Should managers be trained in mental health first aid?

It is useful, provided you expect nothing from it beyond what it is. The course teaches people to approach someone in difficulty and signpost them: the first aider signposts, and does not treat. It replaces neither a health professional nor the work on the organisation. Training managers without touching workload amounts to asking them to absorb a problem nobody is dealing with.

What if it is the manager who is exhausted?

It is common and rarely looked at: Malakoff Humanis reported, in its Absenteeism study 2026 of 9 June 2026, that 53% of managers say they were prescribed at least one period of sick leave in 2025. A manager is entitled to the same levers as their team: their own workload settled by their own boss, peer support, and access to the occupational physician, whom they can approach themselves.

Where to start

Preventing burnout happens in ordinary organisational decisions, taken early, by managers who are equipped and whose own workload is also looked at. To take stock of what already exists in your organisation, write to me and I will tell you where I would start.

Sources

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