How Do You Help Your Team Avoid End-of-Year Burnout?

The calendar from now until New Year's is already full. Year-end deadlines, holiday events, budget season, people taking time off. And your team is heading into it after a long year.

This post is for whoever decides how an organization takes care of its people: the founder, the CEO, the head of school, the executive director, the HR lead, the senior pastor, and the managers they lead.

Your people take care of everyone else. Who takes care of them?

End-of-year burnout isn't a December problem. It's a right-now problem. Six weeks is short enough to plan, and the leaders who get their teams through it well make four simple moves early: stop one thing, protect the last week, name a backup, and say thank you in a way that lands. Below is each move in plain language, with words you can borrow.

Why Are the Last Six Weeks So Hard on Your Team?

Because the workload goes up just as people's reserves go down.

Eagle Hill Consulting surveyed more than 1,400 U.S. employees in November 2025. 55% said they were experiencing burnout. Burned-out workers were nearly three times more likely to say they plan to leave their employer in the coming year (Eagle Hill Consulting, 2025).

The firm's CEO, Melissa Jezior, put the timing plainly: "For many employers, November and December are the most demanding months of the year."

Here's the part that matters most for leaders. Only 42% of burned-out workers had told their manager. And among those who spoke up, 42% said their manager took no action to help (Eagle Hill Consulting, 2025).

That isn't because managers don't care. We know you care, but you can't sit beside every one of your people. Some things never get said at work, and the busiest season of the year is when they get said least.

What Happens If You Do Nothing?

Most leaders have lived this pattern already. The team gets to December with nothing left. Someone calls out the week before the break. Someone else makes it through the holidays and hands in their notice in January. And the person who was holding the most never mentioned it, because they didn't think you had room to hear it.

End-of-year burnout doesn't announce itself. It builds. The leaders who handle this season best don't add a new initiative. They make four decisions before Thanksgiving.

Move 1: What Should You Stop for Six Weeks?

Not pause. Stop, through December 31.

Every team has a meeting, a report or a process that exists because it existed last year. Pick one and cancel it for the rest of the year. Then tell your team what you're dropping and why:

That sentence does two things. It gives people back an hour they didn't have to ask for. And it shows you're paying attention to the load they're carrying, not just the work getting done.

If you can't think of one thing to stop, ask your team: "What's one thing we do every week that we could skip for six weeks without anything breaking?" Someone will know. They've probably been thinking about it for months.

Move 2: How Do You Protect the Last Week of December?

Most teams don't plan the last week of December. They plan up to it and then hope. Some people work because they feel they should, some are halfway out the door, and not much gets done. Everyone just feels a little guilty.

Decide now what that week is. If it's a real break, say so:

Then name that person.

If it isn't a full break, still decide what it is:

The policy matters less than the clarity. When people know what to expect, they can actually rest. Not knowing is tiring all on its own.

Move 3: Who Covers When Someone Is Out?

This is the move most leaders skip, and it's the one that costs the most.

Somewhere on your team, there's a person whose absence would put three urgent messages in your inbox within four hours. You know who it is. If that person gets sick the week before the break, one of two things happens: the work stalls, or one other person quietly absorbs all of it.

Name the backup now, while it isn't urgent. It's a ten-minute conversation:

Write it down somewhere the whole team can see it. This isn't really about efficiency. It's about making sure one person's hard week doesn't become everyone's emergency.

Move 4: How Do You Say Thank You So It Lands?

A holiday lunch or a gift card is a kind gesture, and you should keep doing it if your team enjoys it. But on its own, it says "we remembered to do something." It doesn't say "I see you."

What lands is specific:

It takes thirty seconds. Say it in the hallway, send it as a text, or write it in an email. The specific detail is the gift. It's what people remember in January.

You can't do this for everyone in one week. But you can do it this week for the three people carrying the most. Start there.

What's Behind These Four Moves?

These four moves aren't random. Each one protects something people need to finish a hard stretch well.

At Forte, our Coaches use Mental Fitness training built on four domains. You don't need the vocabulary to use the moves above, but here's how they line up:

When a leader protects all four, people don't just survive the season. They come back in January with something left. Mental Fitness is how people build these on purpose, before the busy season, not only during it.

What Do Your People Need Most Right Now?

You can make all four moves and still have people on your team who are dealing with more than anyone at work knows. A parent who's sick. A marriage under strain. A year that's asked more than they've said out loud.

That's why Forte gives every one of your people their own Forte Coach, a real person outside work who's with them for all of it, the hard weeks and the good ones.

Everything lives in one app. They pick a time, their Coach calls them, and exercises keep them growing between calls. Members can connect with their Coach as early as the next day, and they can keep the same Coach or switch any time (Forte Coaches). Sessions are confidential, and you see only anonymized, organization-wide trends. You can see how Forte works step by step.

Here's how one Forte Member described the difference: "Before Forte, I felt seen but unsupported. After Forte, I feel seen and supported."

You become a place where everyone has someone in their corner. So your people feel as cared for as the people they care for.