Jennifer Moss

Combating Burnout to Reach Our Goals

A heightened state of urgency and rapid change caused burnout to soar in the pandemic. But, it’s 2024 and burnout continues to surge. Brain fog — a symptom of burnout — is playing a terrible mental trick on our workforce and organizational success. It causes people to make more mistakes — they’re more distracted, less agreeable, and simple tasks feel exhausting. They (and unfortunately others) start to question professional effectiveness, which leads to what Jennifer Moss has identified as the “underperformer myth”.

Moss says it’s not underperformance — it’s burnout — and it’s preventable. To get the workforce back to health and high-performance, this is the talk. Based on her award-winning book, The Burnout Epidemic, Moss shares novel, research-backed advice for individuals and leaders to identify chronic stress and the strategies to fix it.

Key takeaways include:

• The myths and facts about burnout — explaining the “underperformer myth”.
• The six root causes of burnout and how they show up at work.
• Juggling organizational pressures while still managing burnout.
• How to better support a team at risk for burnout.
• Understanding toxic productivity: What is in and out of our control.
• How to address specific burnout risks for a diverse workforce.

Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants

There’s a post-pandemic phenomenon that people are experiencing but can’t quite put their finger on. Work is evolving, and so are employees’ expectations of it. Most people would agree, it still feels out of sync. Leaders have been tasked with navigating these changes in real time, without a playbook. Meanwhile, the workforce is in search of more purpose in their work, yet unsure of how or where to find it. They’ve likely found themselves pondering, “why am I here?”

In her provocative new book, Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants, Jennifer Moss pinpoints what is missing from work today. With her background as a global workplace strategist, Moss guides attendees to the forefront of this significant and historical change. Incorporating dialogues with leading academic researchers, interviews with CEOs from the most admired companies worldwide, and discussions with employees across various industries and roles, Moss equips attendees with the understanding needed to answer the question for themselves and the people they lead: “Why are we here?”

Key takeaways include:

• The three unexpected shifts in worker behaviour explained through behavioural science research reveals.
• Moving beyond “the new normal” to “jumping the timeline,” examining how rapid change impacts our attitudes and behaviours.
• Implications of these shifts for talent management and organizational culture.
• Leadership development focusing on purpose, cognitive empathy, and hope to enhance team performance.
• Techniques to boost intrinsic motivation and minimize turnover.
• Initiatives to combat employee isolation and foster belonging.
• Approaches to widen the pipeline for women in leadership roles.
• Effective methods for transitioning from change fatigue to change readiness.
• Guidance for integrating AI while ensuring a sustainable future workforce.
• Leveraging key shifts to more effectively manage a multi-generational workforce.

Jumping the Timeline: Embracing a Future of Work That Isn’t “Normal”

Crises, climate change, sudden remote work, AI, generational displacement, and more acted as a catalyst that moved us out of our current trajectory and popped us into the multiverse of work. This has been jarring, in most part because of the speed with which the world changed. In the last three years, Gallup finds that younger workers’ FOBO (Fear of Becoming Obsolete) has doubled. Our brains naturally want to stick to old patterns and behaviours but on this new timeline, it’s an unworkable strategy.

In this compelling new talk, globally renowned workplace culture strategist Jennifer Moss leverages behavioural and neurosciences research to explain change resistance and how to shift that into a future readiness mindset. Moss dives into new leadership approaches to motivate and engage individuals and teams in a fundamentally different experience of work.

Key takeaways include:

• Why thinking about the future of work as “the new normal” actually holds us back.
• Understanding the future workforce through the lens of behavioural and neurosciences research.
• What is FOBO and why does it matter?
• Future competitiveness in a polycrisis: How to build and maintain a healthy and high-performing work culture while global uncertainty and instability persist.
• Finding the goldilocks zone between AI integration and workforce sustainability.
• Tactics to help reduce fears of obsolescence across generations.
• Finding compromise in the remote/hybrid/in-person debate by changing the narrative from flexibility to freedom.
• Easy-to-operationalize tactics for better engagement of remote and hybrid teams.
• How to lead in the era of personalization: What does the increasing adoption of niche benefits tell us.

How to Optimize an Age Diverse Workforce in Times of Transformation

Currently there are five different generations coming together at work. Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Up soon? Alphas. The labels are less important than the characteristics that make these generations unique. Boomers are retiring at record rates, Millennials and Xers are working fewer hours, while Gen Zs are disinterested in traditional work roles. All generations are struggling with burnout and disengagement. As a talent shortage looms large, addressing the needs of each group will be critical.

For leaders who want to bridge generational divides while ensuring that each group feels heard, award-winning author Jennifer Moss has the answers. Based on her insightful new book, Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants, Moss unpacks how to better relate to each generations’ shifting motivations and mindsets while underlining the importance of belonging and friendships in this current era of loneliness and isolation.

Key takeaways include:

• The economic and environmental drivers impacting generational attitudes and behaviours.
• The biggest generational trends changing work (e.g., social media rebellion, retiree exodus, millennial financial well-being, narrowing of executive pipelines for Gen X women, etc.).
• Research-backed strategies to reduce ageism in the workplace.
• How to personalize engagement and retention strategies based on age diversity.
• Knowing the critical health and employee benefits each generation needs and wants.
• How to build and foster belonging in an age-diverse workforce.

(re)Discovering Happiness at Work

We’ve come through a crisis and for better or worse, it changed us. We gained plenty of skills — how to pivot on the fly, work from anywhere, adopt new tech, build resiliency. We might be feeling hopeful, but we have a long way to go. Gallup says that less than 1 in 4 people are thriving at work.

If the dust is settling and our well-being is (re)booting in our personal lives, why does work still feel so “meh”? We feel less confident, less effective, less connected — blame that on chronic stress — but we’re also hungry for purpose and meaning. We want our MOJO back!

In her newest keynote offering “(re)Discovering Happiness at Work”, award-winning author and journalist Jennifer Moss will engage audiences with novel ways to bring that lost sense of purpose back to work and life. With the latest behavioural and economic sciences research, Moss explains what makes us want to show up at work and how to tear down the psychological barriers that are holding us back. This is a high energy, future-focused, entertaining, data-backed discussion. It will have the audience nodding, “you get me,” while feeling like, “I can do this!”

Key takeaways include:

• (re)Imagine the future: How to turn our gaze back to the future and decide how we want to be and what we can accomplish when we do.
• (re)Connect our diverse workforce: How to think differently about the multigenerational workforces, equity-deserving populations, and increasing diversity in our workforces.
• (re)Prioritize autonomy: Understand what flexibility actually means. Why employees care so much about autonomy and how you can use it to create value.
• (re)Build belonging: How and why to invest in belonging, connection, and friendships, which are more important than ever and more difficult to create in hybrid workplaces.
• (re)Store purpose and meaning: How and Why we need to connect our efforts to purpose and how to begin evolving our employee value propositions.

Workshop: Combating Burnout

Half-day seminar

Jennifer Moss is an expert in the field of burnout. For the past year, she has been deep into the research related to well-being in a crisis and just completed a joint research study with Harvard Business Review that analyzed the impact of COVID-19 on workplace well-being. She was able to gather data from 46 countries which has informed her strategic approach to managing well-being now and in the post-COVID world.

In her latest seminar, Moss dives deeper into the root causes of burnout and the upstream strategies leaders can leverage to prevent them. She will explain how burnout is a “we” problem to solve — a result of external events, societal impacts, organizational policy, and individual mindset — not cured with self-care alone.

Based on over a decade of research, two books on the topic, and her role as a strategist in nearly every sector of the workforce, Moss will offer a novel approach to preventing burnout. She will share where burnout fits into well-being strategies and where it needs to exist on its own. Leaders will walk away with a mix of essential strategic know-how and tactical plans to solve for burnout in their teams and across their entire organization.

The seminar will be followed by six weeks of activities and suggested reading to help further understand the role of leaders and the organization in preventing burnout. It will also include a prescriptive, tactical plan to engage individuals and teams immediately post-event. Leaders will then be able to position their teams to decrease chronic stress and burnout, while increasing well-being in the workplace.

Takeaways include:

• Identifying and de-escalating burnout conditions by learning key upstream interventions.
• Understanding the difference between a burnout strategy and a well-being strategy and why organizations need both.
• Tenets of empathetic leadership and how to help leaders become people-centered in their approach.
• Strategies for improving team well-being.
• Interventions to help build psychological fitness in leaders.

Six weeks of independent work (activities and suggested reading) to learn more about:

• Gauging team stress level.
• Causes of burnout.
• Identifying workload inefficiencies.
• Recognizing employees more effectively to avoid burnout.
• How to check in with employees to get accurate information about their level of well-being.
• Building psychological fitness.

Workshop: The Root Causes of Burnout

Jennifer Moss, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of Unlocking Happiness at Work and The Burnout Epidemic, offers seven workshops for leaders as a follow-up to her keynotes. These workshops focus on the basics of burnout, the root causes of it, and how to solve them.

Each session is 60 minutes, and clients can book one, several, or all of the workshops.

Workshop 1 — Burnout 101: Debunking the Myths

In her essential workshop, Jennifer Moss will dispel the myths impacting our ability to prevent burnout. This workshop will provide attendees with the following takeaways:

• What is (and isn’t) burnout.
• Analyzing the top five biggest burnout myths.
• How to identify burnout in ourselves and others.
• Leadership strategies to decrease burnout in our teams.
• Simple, easy to implement tactics to manage chronic stress in our daily lives.

Workshop 2 — Workload: How to Manage Unmanageable Workloads

Workload has always been the leading cause of burnout, and the pandemic has only made it worse. In this imperative new workshop, Jennifer Moss provides attendees with the tools to manage overwhelming acute and persistent workload.

Takeaways will include:

• The surprising ways we accumulate work.
• How to document our workload and reduce inefficiencies.
• The impact of working on urgent versus priority needs and what we can do about it.
• Communication strategies for leaders and teams to reduce overwork.
• Why “saying no” doesn’t work and how to talk to your manager about your workload.
• The upstream strategies companies can implement to tackle overwork at the root.

Workshop 3 — Perceived Lack of Control: The Future of Work is Flexible

To be productive, happy, healthy, and engaged, people need to feel a sense of agency — the ability to make autonomous decisions about the ways in which they work and live. The most successful organizations get this, but it’s not always easy to implement. Jennifer Moss will provide leaders with the strategies to increase job satisfaction and engagement by implementing more flexibility.

• The value of autonomy (with research-backed examples and case studies).
• The negative consequences of micromanaging for both the micromanaged and the micromanager.
• How perceived lack of control can be a diversity and inclusion problem.
• What is job crafting and how will that increase employee purpose, passion, and engagement.

Workshop 4 — Lack of Reward or Recognition: Everyone Wants to be Seen

We may think we’re recognizing and rewarding the right people in the right ways, but evidence continues to show that we’re getting it wrong. And it’s causing people to burn out. Jennifer Moss helps leaders understand how to build more effective recognition and feedback strategies with burnout prevention at the core.

Takeaways include:

• Why lack of recognition and reward is a root cause of burnout.
• The value of healthy feedback loops and how to achieve them.
• The relationship between bias and lack of diversity in recognition strategies.
• How to build compensation programs that prevent burnout.

Workshop 5 — Poor Relationships: Closing the Loneliness Gap

Having a best friend at work increases the likelihood of staying in our jobs by 50%; it helps us to better handle both work and life stress and our risk of burnout is reduced by 41%. There are plenty of other reasons to encourage healthy and productive relationships at work. And yet, the pandemic changed how we form and foster those same workplace friendships. As a result, loneliness is higher than ever across our global workforce.

Jennifer Moss will speak to attendees about the value of friendships and how we can protect them in a pandemic and post-pandemic world. In this workshop, Moss will discuss:

• The business case for productive working relationships.
• Rethinking how we build friendships at work — less is more.
• How to develop psychological safety for higher-performing teams.
• Strategies for building authenticity in the workplace.
• Reconsidering our team building events — how to go deeper not broader.
• The ways to foster a sense of belonging in the workplace.

Workshop 6 — Lack of Fairness: Leveling the Playing Field

Policies that promote diversity and inclusion have increased substantially in recent years. Even before the pandemic, many of these policies missed the key issues that increase burnout. In the pandemic, these gaps were highlighted, and it generated a need to tackle this problem in new ways

In this workshop, Jennifer Moss will address the following:

• Diversity and inclusions strategies with burnout prevention in mind.
• Understanding the impact of the pandemic on lack of fairness related issues.
• How to ensure organizational justice in practices and performance management.
• Ensuring there are mechanisms for reporting unfair treatment at work.
• Rebuilding psychological safety in a post-pandemic world.

Workshop 7 — Values and Skills Mismatch: Increasing Meaning, Purpose, and Fit

A culture that encourages shared values, beliefs, and behaviours between employees and the company itself enhances overall performance and reduces burnout. Not only because purpose-driven work can act as a barrier to burnout, feeling connected to a mission can fuel engagement — a counterpoint to burnout. Jennifer Moss’ research found that during the pandemic, employees were feeling mentally and emotionally distanced from the values and goals of the organizations they worked for.

Moss will offer strategies for renewing purpose and meaning in our people and teams. Takeaways from this workshop include:

• How to avoid a values and skills mismatch at hiring.
• Communicating values effectively.
• Ensuring leaders are modeling the values we want to see in our teams.
• Developing a career path for overqualified employees (a major issue in our younger workforce).
• Strategies for keeping our people connected to the mission and values during times of change or stress.

Preventing Burnout in the New Future of Work

As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, we’re pivoting to a return to work that carries a number of uncertainties and many unanswered questions. In this time of enormous change, we must prioritize workplace well-being to prevent employee burnout and increase motivation. We’re in a time, like no other in history, where organizations have been given an opportunity to redefine their workplace. 

Jennifer Moss, globally recognized as an expert in workplace wellness, and author of the book, The Burnout Epidemic, published by Harvard Business Press, can show leaders how to capture those lessons from the pandemic. She will walk us through our current realities and provide tangible solutions to increase psychological fitness for a healthier and happier today, and in the new future of work.

Takeaways include:

• Building the psychological fitness skills – particularly efficacy and resilience – to protect our well-being during times of change
• Current realities of working during the pandemic recovery, and how to handle the changes to our work and personal lives while maintaining positive mental health
• The myths and facts about burnout 
• The role of the organization and the individual in preventing burnout
• Ensuring a healthy return to work experience