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Hi there!
Welcome to the May edition of Loud About Inclusion.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it’s a timely reminder of something many workplaces still miss: burnout isn’t usually a personal weakness problem - it’s a systems problem.
When the workload is endless, priorities are unclear, and flexibility is treated like a favour, people don’t just “get tired.” They start to mask. They stop asking. They push through until they can’t. And for employees with disability, chronic health conditions, or neurodivergence, that “push through” expectation can become quietly unsafe - fast.
This month, we’re looking at what burnout really signals (hint: it’s data), what it costs your team, and how leaders can rebalance work in a way that improves performance and inclusion.
If you want to share what’s working in your workplace - hit reply. I read every response.
Melissa Ogden, Founder & Director of Inclusive Business Solutions
At a Glance
Big Idea: Burnout is often a systems issue (workload, control, clarity), not an individual failure.
Lived experience: The pressure to hide struggles until things become unmanageable—and the damage that does.
Inclusive Practice: Rebalance workload, clarify priorities, and normalise sustainable pacing and flexibility.
Feature Article
Burnout isn’t a Badge of Honour - It’s a Work Design Problem
We’ve normalised overload so thoroughly that people feel guilty for needing recovery. We call it “high performance.” We reward responsiveness. We celebrate the person who’s always available.
But burnout doesn’t show up because people “can’t cope.” It shows up because the work is not designed to be sustainable.
And when your system relies on personal sacrifice to function, the people most affected are often those who already carry extra load:
employees masking disability or mental health challenges
employees navigating inaccessible tools and meetings
employees who need flexibility but don’t feel safe asking for it
The “Quiet Maths” Leaders Often Miss
Burnout isn’t just a wellbeing issue - it becomes:
a retention issue (your best people leave first)
a quality issue (errors rise when cognitive load is maxed out)
a safety issue (people stop disclosing needs, risks go unseen)
an inclusion issue (only certain bodies and brains can “keep up”)
If your culture requires people to operate at 90–110% indefinitely, inclusion will always be fragile - because it depends on who can survive the pace.
What to do: A Systems Reset (Not a Pep Talk)
Here are three practical levers that change burnout outcomes quickly:
Clarify what matters (and what doesn’t).
If everything is “urgent,” people can’t make good decisions. Define the top 3 priorities for the month - and explicitly pause or drop lower-value work.Rebalance load visibly.
“Just speak up if you’re overloaded” doesn’t work when people fear judgement. Make workload review a normal leader responsibility, not an employee confession.Protect recovery time like it’s infrastructure.
Meeting-free blocks, realistic deadlines, and predictable flexibility are not perks - they’re what allow people to do good work repeatedly.
My experience
Hiding Until I Couldn’t
For a long time, I thought the safest option was to keep going - even when I was struggling.
Not because I didn’t want support, but because I didn’t trust what would happen if I asked:
Would I be seen as less capable?
Would I become “hard work”?
Would I lose opportunities?
So I did what many people do: I got better at hiding it.
From the outside, it looked like competence. On the inside, it was constant effort -managing the workload, managing the emotions, managing how I appeared. And the longer you do that, the more your body keeps the score.
What helped wasn’t someone telling me to be more resilient. What helped was when the environment changed - when expectations became clearer, the workload became negotiable, and support stopped feeling like a transaction.
Burnout didn’t need a mindset shift. It needed a work design shift.
This month’s Inclusion Play
The Quick Play: Energy Mapping (10 mins): Ask: “What are the top 3 tasks draining the most energy right now- and what’s one adjustment we can make to reduce the load?” (Think: fewer meetings, clearer briefs, shorter deadlines with smaller scope, written-first updates.)
The Team Play: Load Balancing (30 mins): Once a fortnight, run a simple round:
What’s on your plate?
What’s blocking you?
What can be paused, shared, or simplified?
Make it operational - not emotional.
The Leader Play: Sustainable Workload Norms (set this month): Choose 2 norms and model them hard (e.g., “no meetings over lunch,” “no expectation of response after hours,” “decision deadlines are realistic,” “we reduce scope before we extend hours”).
Inclusion Win
The Meeting-Free Block That Changed Everything
A reader shared that their team introduced a meeting-free block twice a week - no internal meetings, no “quick calls,” just focused work time.
The impact: less context switching, fewer late nights to “catch up,” and a noticeable drop in stress across the team - especially for people who found meetings cognitively exhausting.
Small structural changes beat big wellbeing posters every time.
Coming Next Month
Next month: Accessibility Is Not Optional. We’re diving into accessibility basics and the quick digital fixes that remove daily friction fast
Watch this space: We will be expanding the newsletter to include exclusive content for paid subscribers… more to be revealed in February!
Work with me
Manager confidence is the unlock.
If your leaders want to support mental health well but don’t know what to do in real time, I run practical Manager Sessions focused on sustainable workload, inclusive flexibility, and safe support conversations.
About Melissa Ogden
Melissa Ogden provides leaders with practical insights into workplace inclusion. Combining lived experience as a profoundly deaf business professional with strategic planning and commercial management experience across multiple industries, she helps leaders through advisory, consulting and workshops tailored to meet the business exactly where it is in its journey.
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