Are employee complaints about workload justifiable?

Employee complaints about workload are pretty common in Canadian organizations. Are they justified? 

People Insight’s global benchmark data from millions of employee survey responses show that 64 per cent of employees say they can comfortably cope with their workload, which means that more than one-in-three feel that they can’t. 

A 2023 study by analytics firm Workforce Science Associates had similar results, finding that 67 per cent of first-line and mid-managers and 72 per cent of individual contributors said that their workload was reasonable. 

Are the numbers high enough for HR and leadership to be concerned if their organization reflects that proportion? 

As demands rise, workload increases fastest at the top, says Linda Duxbury, professor of management at Carleton University in Ottawa, and she believes that can be the beginning of developing issues within an organization.

“Higher executives get recognized and rewarded for operational tasks, but you also expect them to be empathetic, do performance, and all this other stuff that’s on the side of their desk,” she says, stressing that it should prompt an honest look at whether HR leaders’ roles are already beyond sustainable limits.  

When the people charged with stewarding talent and culture are personally overloaded, it could be a warning that the organization’s operating model may be relying on unsustainable effort rather than realistic capacity, according to Duxbury. 

Reframing what ‘normal’ overload looks like 

Nick Turner, a professor of management at the University of Calgary, argues that context, pattern, and language matter more than the number of workload complaints. “A bit of complaining about being busy is normal in most jobs, especially during predictable peaks, but what should make HR pause is when the complaints shift from ‘I’m busy right now’ to ‘This never lets up’ or ‘I can’t get my work done properly anymore,’” says Turner, who believes that those simple phrases draw a line between short-term pressure and chronic overload. 

“When people feel there’s no slack, no recovery, and no control, that predicts burnout and turnover, not occasional spikes in work,” adds Turner. “So a one-third minority saying workload feels unmanageable isn’t trivial — in many organizations, that group tends to be clustered in particular roles, teams, or career stages, so it’s often an early warning signal that the system, not just individual capability, is under strain.” 

At that stage, complaints are not about low resilience, according to Turner, but they’re evidence of conditions that will, over time, push up errors, turnover, and benefits costs. Treating that kind of feedback as mere grumbling misses the fact that employees are often describing the same dynamics that an organization’s risk and finance reports will uncover months or years later, he says. 

Duxbury’s research on work-role overload gives HR a way to identify that pattern. “Work-role overload is having too much to do in the amount of time that you've got to do it in, feeling rushed, feeling stressed, and feeling overloaded by all your work,” she says. “Workload is going to go up and down through the calendar year in a business, and you can be okay on a hill, but if your whole life is hills, then you start to get anoxic.”  

When employees describe their whole year as one long hill, that’s the point where “normal” complaints become a structural risk, adds Duxbury. 

Moving beyond just counting hours 

For Turner, it’s not just the hours worked, but it’s what happens during those hours that contributes to overload. “Decades of research show that workload is as much about intensity and fragmentation as it is about time — hours matter, but they’re a blunt instrument,” he says. “People struggle most when work is complex, constantly interrupted, emotionally demanding, or governed by an ‘everything is urgent’ norm, and those features of work are more predictive of stress and sustainability than hours alone.” 

HR leaders can better assess workload and overload by asking the right questions, such as how often priorities change mid-week, how frequently tasks are interrupted, and whether employees feel able to do work they are proud of, according to Turner. 

Duxbury says that her research has found that, since the pandemic, “more than 50 per cent [of employees] have high levels of real overload” — a figure well above the 36 per cent implied by People Insight’s coping question. She argues that leaders are often focused on the wrong target. “The question to be asking is, are levels of my organization overwhelmed with work for a prolonged period of time?” she says, pointing out that it moves the discussion away from debating an “acceptable” level of workload complaints and toward understanding where overload is chronic and self-reinforcing. 

When complaints reveal deeper organizational risk 

On the surface, a stable two-thirds of employees saying they’re coping with their workload might tempt leadership to believe workload risk is under control, especially if engagement scores are also strong — the People Insight data found engagement at 79 per cent, notably higher than the coping- with-workload figure. Turner warns that this is a dangerous assumption. “Engagement is a short-to-medium term indicator, and workload pressure plays out over longer time horizons,” he says. “People can feel motivated, committed, and even energized while simultaneously handling unsustainable workloads.”  

Turner points out that employees often cope with high workload before they crack. “Engagement can stay high right up until exhaustion, disengagement, or exit suddenly spikes, so for HR leaders, this means engagement scores shouldn’t be taken as proof that workload risk is low — they’re not designed for capturing cumulative strain,” he says. 

Duxbury pushes HR leaders to broaden its lens beyond payroll lines when assessing the risk that overload presents to an organization. “They have to start looking at the true cost of having the number of people that they’ve got in their workforce [who are overloaded] — I mean stress-related leave, EAP, prescription drug use, absenteeism, intent turnover,” she says. “All of those are linked very strongly to workload.”  

These metrics connect day-to-day pressure to longer-term financial and human impacts, helping HR make the case that overloaded teams aren’t just a morale issue but a material cost driver, says Duxbury. 

Turner points to similar clues inside teams that point to systemic risk for an organization. He highlights patterns where “the same roles keep reporting overload year after year,” and complaints are accompanied by “rising errors, shortcuts, or declining learning and development.” He also believes that eventually overloaded employees take less pride in their work and are focused more on checking boxes by “cutting corners or delivering work they’re not proud of just to keep the rate up.”  

When those signals appear together, treating workload as an individual coping issue tends to make things worse, says Turner. 

Framing workload issues in business terms 

Both Duxbury and Turner believe that what convinces business leaders that heavy workload could be an issue is framing it in the language of risk and performance for the organization, not as a perk for wellness.  

“HR should act decisively when workload complaints are persistent, patterned, and predictive, especially when they coincide with turnover, errors, or stalled development,” says Turner. “The strongest evidence shows that chronic overload undermines learning, adaptability, and quality over time, so acting on workload isn’t about lowering standards, it’s about preserving the conditions that allow people to meet them sustainably.” 

For HR leaders, that framing can shift the conversation from perceived “softness” toward protecting the organization’s capacity to deliver over the long term, says Turner.