As leaders prepare to pause for the holidays, many will admit they are running on reserve. The pressures of constant change, competing expectations, and emotional load have become defining features of modern leadership. Across industries, burnout and disconnection are no longer exceptions — they are signals that our current approach to wellbeing is no longer working.
Recent research from Gallagher’s 2025 Workforce Trends Report highlights that burnout is a critical and growing challenge in Australian workplaces. The report, surveying over 2,500 employees nationwide, found that more than 25% of workers are currently experiencing burnout — an increase from previous years. Disturbingly, over 80% of employees with low wellbeing continue to work when they should be resting, signaling widespread hidden stress. These findings underscore why empathetic leadership, with attention to meaningful connection and psychological safety, is essential for managing wellbeing and sustaining performance in today’s complex work environments.
From wellness to wholeness
Traditional wellbeing frameworks such as PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment) and the Five Ways to Wellbeing (Connect, Be Active, Keep Learning, Give, Take Notice) remain valuable. They remind us that wellbeing is holistic — encompassing emotional, social, and psychological dimensions.
The issue is not with the frameworks themselves, but with how organisations have interpreted them. For too long, organisational wellbeing has been viewed through the narrow lens of reactive stress management and physical health. To truly sustain human energy and resilience, wellbeing must evolve—and empathy is driving that evolution.
Empathy turns wellbeing from reactive to proactive by enabling leaders to understand and respond to the emotional and psychological realities their people face daily. When leaders practice empathy, they not only hear the words their employees say but also feel the unspoken emotions behind them — stress, fear, hope, or frustration. This deeper understanding creates a sense of psychological safety, where employees feel valued, supported, and courageous enough to be authentic. Empathy reduces the hidden drivers of burnout — like isolation, miscommunication, and feeling undervalued — by fostering connection and inclusion. In this way, empathy directly sustains mental and emotional health, making wellbeing a lived experience rather than a programmatic checkbox. The impact is profound: teams led with empathy are more trusting, engaged, and productive because their wellbeing is holistically nurtured.
From measurement to meaning
Empathy is often described as difficult to measure, yet it already lives within the most reliable indicators of organisational health. The strongest predictor of team wellbeing is psychological safety — the degree to which people feel safe to speak up, contribute ideas, and raise concerns without fear of judgment or consequences.
When psychological safety is present, engagement rises, collaboration deepens, and discretionary effort increases. It is empathy made visible. Leaders who listen actively, respond thoughtfully, and act consistently create this environment. They signal that people’s experiences matter — and in doing so, they reduce one of the most potent psychosocial hazards in the workplace: fear.
Understanding and addressing psychosocial risks — such as excessive workload, unclear role, or lack of support — is another way in which empathy becomes measurable. Empathetic leaders recognise that wellbeing cannot be maintained in environments that compromise emotional or psychological safety. When empathy informs how these risks are identified and mitigated, wellbeing becomes proactive rather than reactive.
The future of wellbeing measurement will no longer rely on engagement scores or absence rates. It will track how safe people feel within work systems, not just how satisfied they are. Empathy shifts measurement from counting participation to understanding experience — from statistics to meaning.
From self-management to shared leadership
For decades, wellbeing has been treated as an individual responsibility: manage your stress, practice mindfulness, take time off. While personal accountability remains essential, this perspective ignores the systemic nature of emotional strain. The next era of wellbeing will be defined by shared leadership — where empathy is a collective capacity rather than a personal trait.
When leaders model empathy, they change the emotional tone of work. They create space for dialogue, enable healthy debate without consequence, and respond to pressure with perspective rather than reactivity. This shared practice of empathy distributes care across the organisation. It ensures that wellbeing is no longer a human resources initiative, but a leadership discipline embedded in everyday decisions.
Empathy at the engine of renewal
As we enter the holiday period, empathy outside of the workplace is the mechanism for renewal, the capacity to pause, listen inwardly, and reconnect with what matters most. Renewal does not come from stepping away; it comes from returning to oneself with understanding.
Leaders who practice empathy toward themselves — acknowledging fatigue, recognising limits, and allowing recovery without guilt — are better equipped to lead others with steadiness and compassion. They return recharged but also reconnected. This reconnection helps to create teams that can reset, adapt, and perform with greater humanity.
The future of wellbeing is human-first leadership
The future of wellbeing will be defined not by how many wellness programs an organisation offers, but by how safe, supported, and connected its people feel. Empathy will shape that future. It will anchor wellbeing in psychological safety, guide how we identify and address psychosocial risks, and restore meaning to the experience of work itself.
Empathy is the bridge to human-first leadership — where we balance the heart that feels with the mind that leads. It is the structural core of modern leadership: building trust, inclusion, and emotional understanding in a world that is constantly evolving. When leaders lead with empathy, they don’t just manage performance; they grow humanity at work.
