Junior workers are burning out earlier, and it's not a generational issue

Many would have you believe that this is due to generational fragility. But the real issue is a structural one, rooted in how companies onboard, communicate with, and develop early-career talent. Executives see workplace culture as critical—77% call it “very important”—yet only 37% of entry-level employees agree, according to the DHR data. Entry-level workers are also 2.5 times less likely to view their company’s culture as well-defined. The gap reveals a deep truth in that organizations haven’t adapted how they integrate workers who need meaning and clarity from day one, not years in. And without those connections, early-career employees burn out before they can develop into pipeline leaders.

The meaning deficit

Christina Maslach’s burnout research, widely considered the gold standard in the field, identifies three components: exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. Early-career workers are vulnerable to all three, but cynicism, which is the loss of meaning and organizational commitment, hits them hardest.

“The further away you get from organizational purpose or the clarity of your role as it ties to organizational purpose, the harder it is to make meaning of what you're doing on a day-to-day basis," says Kacy Fleming, an organizational psychologist and workplace strategist who formerly led global well-being at Takeda.

The data bears this out. McKinsey research shows 85% of senior leaders say they're living their purpose at work, compared to just 15% of younger workers and frontline managers. This isn’t an age gap we’re seeing, but one of proximity. Senior leaders have years to understand their role’s connection to organizational mission; a benefit that entry-level employees don’t.

Fleming calls this a “meaning deficit,” not generational entitlement. When new employees don’t see mission statements lived out or their role’s connection to broader purpose made clear, they lose organizational commitment quickly. For Gen Z and millennial workers, who research shows prioritize purpose as central to engagement and well-being, the absence of that meaning accelerates burnout.

The culture disconnect compounds this problem. Shelley Smith, founder of workplace culture consultancy Premier Rapport, sees this play out in the companies she works with. Senior leaders think culture means “we’re here to get the work done,” she says. Entry-level workers are going to focus on what the work environment actually looks like and how they’re being treated.

Smith says you can hear it in how employees describe their jobs: “It’s a paycheck and I’m still looking,” versus “I really love it here, they met me where I am.” When definitions of culture don’t align, or when companies can’t articulate either version, early-career employees disengage.

The expectation mismatch

The burnout gap also stems from mismatched expectations around feedback, workload, and role clarity. Smith, who has worked with companies ranging from fewer than 10 employees to more than 14,000, says younger workers expect clarity in ways previous generations didn’t. Annual performance reviews feel “absurd” to them; they want dialogue weekly or even daily.

Without that clarity, work overload creeps in immediately. "Every day they come in, they feel like it's something new and [they think] ‘You didn't tell me,’ or, ‘You didn't train me,’ or, ‘You didn't give that resource,’" Smith says. "They're not wrong."

Fleming describes this as the “honeymoon phase.” Early-career workers arrive excited and eager to prove themselves. “In that excitement, we overwork, we overplease, we overdo everything. The fastest way many of us have learned—through our education systems—to please people is to achieve, is to work hard,” Fleming explains. Then, without those clear role expectations, they’re told they’re “too eager” or need to “sit back and listen.” The shift from excitement to cynicism happens when effort isn’t met with clarity about how to contribute effectively.

That dynamic worsens another problem: fewer early-career workers want to move into management roles. Smith says they see leadership as “more work with a little bit more pay” and question the payoff. "I saw my parents do that," she hears from younger workers. "Why would I want to do that when I can just do this, still make good money, have what I consider to be a better balance in life?"

What actually works

The solutions aren’t expensive wellness programs or perks. They’re structural changes to how companies onboard, communicate, and develop early-career talent—changes that require management to acknowledge gaps in how they’ve traditionally operated.

Structured onboarding

During Fleming’s 22-year pharma experience, she created an onboarding program that illustrates what effective structure looks like. In order for new hires to feel comfortable in their work environment, rather than focusing solely on training, she built a week-long program where they met people across compliance, legal, marketing, and other teams. The program was "extremely well received and made a huge difference in retaining employees into [their] first and second year," she says.
While introductions are important, structured onboarding should also show early-career workers how their role connects to organizational purpose. "When you start to get an idea of what each person is working on, you can see how your role ladders up to those jobs. That’s what ties to organizational purpose," Fleming says.

This doesn’t require 50 individual one-on-ones with every new employee that joins, Fleming reassures. Video modules, quick vignettes, or group introductions are effective options. She emphasizes that structured onboarding means building connections to home office, to role, to purpose, and between leader and employee.

Role clarity

Role clarity matters just as much. Fleming gives the example of setting expectations for meetings: a manager might tell a new employee they’re invited to observe and learn rather than contribute immediately, then debrief afterward. That prevents the “honeymoon crash” where eager employees over-contribute and get pushback.

“One of the top three solutions is role clarity," Fleming says. "This [burnout] is not rocket science."

The problem is that role clarity requires work, specifically retraining leaders on communication. “It is much more appetizing to say, 'Okay, I'm going to put this program in place and it's going to fix our burnout problem' than it is to say, 'Okay, we need to retrain all of our leaders on how they need to communicate with employees because they are not setting up clear role expectations,'" Fleming says.

Programs feel like solutions, whereas retraining leaders feels like an admission that management is broken. But without role clarity, burnout programs backfire, leading to more cynicism when employees try solutions that don’t address the root problem.

Communication alignment

Smith recommends using behavioral assessments like Predictive Index during onboarding to eliminate guesswork about how managers and employees communicate. Both parties take the assessment, then sit down during the first week to discuss preferences around communication style, decision-making, and triggers.

“It immediately creates that courtship where everybody's kind of watching each other. It just zooms it in," Smith says. Questions addressed include whether someone prefers detail or big picture, whether they interpret support as helpful or as micromanagement, and whether they prefer bullet points in emails or phone calls.

Smith also coaches companies to ensure their hiring teams tell aligned stories about culture during interviews; not generalities, but concrete examples of what teamwork or collaboration looks like in practice. She recommends “stay interviews” at 30 days to check alignment: comparing what was shared and stated in the interview versus “where are we at now?”

Benefits that connect

Another trend Smith observes is “à la carte” total compensation, where companies offer a menu of benefits beyond salary, health insurance, and 401(k). Employees choose what matters to them, be it pet insurance, gym memberships, mental wellness support, or community groups. This addresses individual needs while connecting employees to organizational culture through shared values. Smith says this model is “starting to slow down” the typical one-to-two-year job hopping and leading to employment lasting that little bit longer.

Fleming emphasizes that organizational purpose must be communicated clearly and visibly from leadership, not just displayed on the walls. Research from Deloitte shows 89% of Gen Z and 92% of millennials say purpose and meaning-fit are important to their job satisfaction and well-being. Without that clarity, cynicism takes root, and employees leave.

The business cost of inaction

The consequences of ignoring early-career burnout extend beyond turnover. DHR’s data shows employee engagement dropped from 88% to 64% in the past year, even as burnout remained high at 83%. And the share of employees citing lack of recognition as a top burnout driver nearly doubled, from 17% to 32%.

Companies are losing early-career talent before they can even develop into mid-level leaders, creating pipeline gaps. Those who stay but disengage undermine productivity and innovation. The pattern reinforces itself as junior employees see burned-out managers and question whether leadership is worth pursuing at all.

Smith says the younger workforce isn’t wrong about what they’re demanding. “They're not wrong about the capacity. They're not wrong about total well-being. They're 100% right,” she says.

Fleming frames it as a broader need to redesign work itself. “We're still working in a system that was designed for industrialization and piecework and parts and that sort of thing. We haven't redesigned work to meet the needs of the technology era,” she says.

But while that redesign may take years, the bridge solutions are simpler: clear communication, role clarity, and structured onboarding. “Just being better at being human is what is going to save us,” Fleming says. “There has to be some form of rigor in the process of communicating why we do work and how we work.”

Without that rigor, companies can’t build loyalty or retain the talent they need to sustain operations. “You cannot demand loyalty from someone who does not understand the work of the organization,” Fleming concludes. Organizations that continue treating early-career burnout as a generational quirk rather than a structural failure will find themselves with an increasingly shallow talent pool, and a generation of workers who’ve learned that commitment to employers is a liability, not an asset.