58% employees in India experiencing burnout: BCG report

While burnout is prevalent across all employee types, it’s far higher for certain subgroups.

A latest survey has revealed that 58 percent of employees in India experience burnout, 10 percent points higher than the global average.

According to the report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), average of 48 percent of workers from eight countries indicate that they are currently grappling with burnout. Based on a survey of 11,000 desk-based and frontline workers in eight countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK, and the US) and titled 'Four Keys to Boosting Inclusion and Beating Burnout', the report also revealed that when employees feel included at work, burnout is halved.

By addressing key factors such as senior leadership's open commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), providing fair and equal opportunities as well as good access to resources, and ensuring psychological safety with direct managers, companies can create a more inclusive environment, the report suggested.

Inclusion is central to building and maintaining a successful workforce. Inclusion in the workplace means that employees feel valued, respected, supported, and like they belong. Workers experiencing higher inclusion are also more likely to stay in their jobs, decreasing business turnover costs.

For this research, BCG quantified inclusion as a score of how inclusive an employee finds the workplace to be, using BCG’s BLISS Index, a statistically rigorous tool that identifies the factors that most strongly influence feelings of inclusion in the workplace.

While burnout is prevalent across all employee types, it’s far higher for certain subgroups. Women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, and deskless workers experienced up to 26 percent higher burnout. Moreover, these employee groups reported lower inclusion than employees who were in majority groups or were desk-based.

BCG’s proprietary BLISS (Bias-Free, Leadership, Inclusion, Safety, and Support) Index demonstrates that as feelings of inclusion improve, burnout rates decrease dramatically. Workers with low inclusion are twice as likely to experience burnout as those with high inclusion scores. This strong inverse relationship between inclusion and burnout underscores the critical role of inclusion in fostering a thriving workplace.

An interesting observation in our India study revealed a significantly better response and reduction in burnout where companies prioritise inclusion.

“Businesses in India and globally have a substantial opportunity to improve employee well-being and performance by focusing on the impactful yet currently low-performing sentiments related to inclusion,” said Roshni Rathi, Pride BCG India lead ally and AP DEI topic lead.