Power Hour
The Burnout Reset

Intro by Matt Manners

Dr Jo Burrell
Co-Founder & Clinical Psychologist
Ultimate Resillience

When HR Burns Out, Organisations Feel It

Burnout in HR isn’t simply about heavy workloads or poor coping. It is often the predictable outcome of a role defined by emotional labour, moral tension and competing expectations.

Drawing on data from almost 1,500 HR professionals, Dr Jo Burrell will share what we now know about burnout within the profession, alongside significantly elevated rates of depression and anxiety compared to the general population. She will explore what this reveals about the pressures embedded in the HR role, why individual “reset” approaches are not enough, and why supporting HR wellbeing is a strategic priority for any organisation serious about performance.

Because you cannot build healthy organisations on exhausted people teams.

Bharat Siyani
VP, People & Culture
BreatheHR

Beyond Resilience: Rethinking Work Design, Emotional Load and Performance in HR

Burnout is too often framed as an individual resilience problem. In reality, it’s a work design problem — and HR is frequently holding the emotional load for a system that isn’t working.

In this session, we’ll look at burnout through a work design lens: how goals, structure, decision‑making and people practices either enable sustainable performance or quietly drain it. We’ll unpack the often invisible emotional and moral labour within HR roles, and why “reset” solutions — away days, wellbeing apps, one‑off initiatives — don’t touch the underlying causes.

Using practical examples, we’ll explore how to:

• Diagnose when burnout risk is rooted in work design, not individual weakness
• Spot and manage the hidden emotional load HR carries
• Audit people practices that may be unintentionally eroding performance
• Simplify complexity so leaders can communicate and act with clarity

Sonia Mooney
HR Transformation Consultant
Creator and Author of High-Impact HR

Keep Your People at the Centre: Redesigning Work to Enable Our People and Business

Burnout isn’t just about workload or resilience. It’s often the hidden outcome of how work has been designed. In this session, Sonia Mooney shares how our people practices either enable sustainable performance – or quietly drain energy and momentum. Drawing on insights from her High-Impact HR methodology and blending real-world transformation insights with leadership and mindset shifts, Sonia outlines actionable ways to reduce friction, simplify the complexity that holds organisations back and create the conditions for people to thrive. Because sustainable performance doesn’t result from pushing harder. We achieve the best business outcomes when we lead with clarity, courage and keep our people at the centre.

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