Overload at Work: Have We Normalised Workplace Stress?

We may have normalised stress at work so much that we have started calling it overload.

April was Stress Awareness Month, and in a recent webinar we delivered on overload, one thing stood out clearly: many people do not necessarily identify with the word stress, but they do recognise the feeling of being overloaded.

Overload feels familiar. It is the foggy, tired, mentally scattered feeling at the end of a working day. It is being busy from morning to evening but not feeling as though anything meaningful has moved forward. It is the constant switching between meetings, messages, tasks and decisions.

Many people describe this as overload. But often, these experiences are also signs of stress.

The difficulty is that they have become so common in modern working life that we may no longer recognise them as signals that something needs attention. This is why conversations about workplace stress need to move beyond awareness and into practical action.

Why Overload Can Feel Easier to Name Than Stress

When people think about stress, they often picture something more visible or extreme: a crisis, a breaking point, a panic response, or someone who is clearly not coping.

But stress does not always look like that.

It can look like:

• rereading the same email several times because your brain will not take it in
• being unusually irritable with colleagues or family because your capacity is depleted
• lying awake at night thinking about unfinished tasks
• struggling to prioritise because everything feels urgent
• working constantly but feeling as though nothing is really moving forward
• finding it difficult to switch off, even when the working day has ended

We might call this overload because it feels softer, more acceptable, or more reflective of everyday working life. But that does not mean it is separate from stress. In many cases, overload is the language people use when stress has become normalised.

This matters because language shapes how we respond. If we see stress only as something severe or crisis-level, we may miss the earlier signs. We may keep pushing through, assuming that feeling foggy, wired, distracted and depleted is simply part of working life.

The CIPD guidance on stress at work makes a helpful distinction between pressure and stress, and highlights the importance of prevention and early intervention.

The Modern Workplace Is Cognitively Intense

For many people, the issue is not simply that they have too much work. It is that work has become more fragmented, more continuous and more cognitively demanding.

Many employees are now navigating:

• back-to-back meetings
• constant notifications
• competing priorities
• rapid task switching
• blurred boundaries between work and home
• pressure to respond quickly
• increased use of automation and AI
• higher expectations around speed, output and availability

Technology can help us do more, but it has also changed what we expect from people.

If systems allow work to move faster, the expectation can quietly become that people should consistently produce more: more output, faster responses, greater availability, more adaptability and more cognitive switching.

Work becomes less about completing a defined set of tasks and more about keeping pace with a continuous flow of demands. That can feel relentless. And when relentlessness becomes normal, stress can become much harder to recognise.

This is also why employee wellbeing cannot be separated from productivity. McKinsey Health Institute’s report on thriving workplaces highlights the role employers can play in improving both workforce health and organisational performance.

Do You Recognise This Feeling at the End of a Workday?

It may be helpful to pause and consider what the end of a typical working day feels like.

Do you:

• feel tired but wired?
• struggle to switch off?
• find it hard to remember what you actually achieved?
• feel like you have been busy all day but not productive?
• notice your patience is lower than usual?
• feel mentally foggy or easily distracted?
• keep checking messages even when you are supposed to be finished?
• feel guilty for not doing enough, even after a full day?
• struggle to sleep because your mind is still processing work?

Many people would answer yes to at least some of these. Often, they would say, “I’m just overloaded.”

But if this is happening regularly, it may be worth recognising that overload is not necessarily separate from stress. It may be the way stress is showing up.

For individuals, tools such as a wellbeing action plan can help people reflect on what supports their wellbeing, what early warning signs look like, and what practical steps may help. But individual tools are only one part of the picture.

Overload Is Not Only an Individual Issue

A common mistake in workplace wellbeing is to treat overload as a personal resilience problem.

Of course, individual coping strategies matter. Sleep, recovery, boundaries, movement, nutrition, reflection and support all play a role. People do need practical tools to help them manage pressure, regulate energy and recover properly.

But overload is also shaped by the system people are working in.

If someone is moving between meetings all day, catching up on focused work in the evening, responding to constant messages, and trying to complete complex tasks in fragmented pockets of time, the issue is not simply whether they are resilient enough.

The issue may be how the work is designed.

This is where conversations about stress need to move beyond individual coping and into workplace design. If lots of people are overloaded, exhausted, distracted and struggling to switch off, that is not just a collection of individual wellbeing concerns. It is organisational data.

For organisations, this is where a more structured approach to wellbeing consultancy can help. Rather than relying only on one-off initiatives, organisations can look at the patterns, pressures and cultural norms that are shaping people’s experience of work.

The Hidden Cost of “Normal” Overload

One of the challenges with overload is that people can still appear productive.

They attend meetings. They reply to messages. They stay visible. They keep things moving. From the outside, it may look as though everything is functioning.

But underneath, their capacity for deep thinking, prioritisation, creativity, emotional regulation and decision-making may be reduced.

This can show up as:

• slower decisions
• more mistakes
• reduced creativity
• poorer communication
• increased frustration
• lower patience
• difficulty prioritising
• avoidance of complex tasks
• people working longer but achieving less

By the time stress shows up as sickness absence, burnout or turnover, the early signals have often been present for some time. They may simply have been described as busyness, overload, workload pressure or “the way work is now.”

This is why early recognition matters. Stress is not only a wellbeing issue once someone reaches crisis point. It is also present in the smaller patterns that affect how people think, communicate, collaborate and recover.

Work Design Is a Wellbeing Issue

If overload is common across a team or organisation, it is worth looking beyond individual stress management.

Leaders and HR teams can ask:

• Are people getting enough focused time for work that requires concentration, problem-solving and decision-making?
• Are priorities genuinely clear, or does everything feel urgent?
• Are expectations around responsiveness realistic and clearly communicated?
• Are meetings helping the work, or fragmenting it?
• Do people have space between meetings to process, follow up and take action?
• Are managers equipped to notice the early signs of stress before they escalate?
• Are workload conversations happening early enough, or only once someone is already struggling?

These are not just productivity questions. They are wellbeing questions.

The HSE’s Management Standards for work-related stress identify key areas of work design that can affect stress levels, including demands, control, support, relationships, role and change.

Back-to-back meetings may look efficient, but they often push focused work into evenings, lunch breaks or fragmented gaps. Instant communication can create the impression that everything needs an immediate response. Unclear priorities increase cognitive load because people have to spend additional energy working out what matters most.

Small changes to work design can make a meaningful difference. This might include:

• clearer prioritisation
• better meeting discipline
• shared communication norms
• protected focus time
• realistic workload conversations
• more recovery between demanding periods
• managers who feel confident having early, supportive conversations about pressure

This is also where stress risk assessments can be useful. Done well, they are not just a compliance exercise. They provide a structured way to understand the sources of pressure in a team or organisation and identify practical controls.

ACAS also provides clear guidance on managing work-related stress risk assessments, including the importance of working with employees to understand and reduce risks.

From Awareness to Everyday Habits

Stress Awareness Month can be a helpful prompt, but awareness alone is rarely enough.

People may understand that stress matters, but still return to the same working patterns: the same meeting overload, the same unclear priorities, the same pressure to respond instantly, the same lack of recovery time.

For change to be meaningful, organisations need to move from awareness into skills and habits.

That means helping individuals recognise their own signs of pressure. It means equipping managers to notice changes in behaviour, communication and morale. It means creating team norms that make it easier to speak honestly about workload before people reach breaking point.

This is one reason mental health training and leadership development need to be practical, psychologically informed and grounded in real workplace situations. Managers are often the first to notice when something changes in a team, but they need the confidence and structure to respond early and supportively.

It also means using the information already present in the organisation. If employees are repeatedly describing themselves as overloaded, mentally drained or unable to focus, that should be treated as useful insight. It tells us something about the experience of work.

An organisational wellbeing audit can help organisations move from anecdote to insight, identifying the gap between what is offered, what employees experience, and what meaningful change could look like.

We Need to Stop Treating Overload as Normal

The goal is not to pathologise every difficult day. Work will always involve pressure. There will always be busy periods, competing demands and moments that require effort.

But when people regularly end the working day feeling foggy, wired, depleted and unable to switch off, we should be careful about calling that normal.

It may be common, but common is not the same as healthy. And it is not the same as sustainable.

Not everyone will say, “I am stressed.” Some people will say:

• “I’m overloaded.”
• “I’m just busy.”
• “My brain is fried.”
• “I can’t focus.”
• “I feel like I’m not getting anywhere.”
• “I’m constantly behind.”

Those phrases matter. They may be the language people use before they recognise something as stress.

For organisations, this creates an opportunity. If people are talking about overload, listen carefully. It may be one of the clearest signals that the design of work needs attention.

The answer is not always another wellbeing tip. Sometimes the answer is fewer unnecessary meetings, clearer priorities, better boundaries, more realistic expectations, more recovery, more thoughtful leadership and better work design.

Because overload is not always separate from stress.

Often, it is stress that has become normalised.