New research reveals the one workplace stressor doing more damage than too much work and conflicting demands combined
American workers are under pressure. But while conversations about burnout tend to focus on heavy workloads, demanding bosses, or the creep of always-on culture, new research points to a more insidious culprit: not knowing what your job actually requires.
A sweeping meta-analysis published in the Journal of Applied Psychology by researchers from Auburn University, Old Dominion University, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign synthesized 515 studies spanning six decades and nearly 800,000 workers.
Its conclusion?
Of the three foundational workplace stressors, role ambiguity, meaning unclear expectations around what an employee is supposed to do, is by far the most damaging.
“We often think of role overload as a detrimental stressor,” said Gargi Sawhney, lead author of the study and associate professor of psychological sciences at Auburn University. “But what we found was that role ambiguity, not having enough clarity about your work, was the most detrimental outcome for most of the outcomes we studied.”
The stressor doing the most harm
The study examined three role stressors that appear across every industry and job type. Role overload refers to having too much to do. Role conflict involves competing or contradictory demands, such as receiving conflicting direction from supervisors. Role ambiguity is the absence of clarity about what an employee is actually expected to do.
READ MORE: Burnout rises as a ‘baseline’ experience at work, report finds
Sawhney says the goal was to understand not only how these stressors harm employees but also what causes them in the first place.
“We wanted to examine not just how they’re detrimental, but what are the antecedents of these stressors, how they come into being,” she said. “It took us upwards of seven years to get to the finish line, but we were able to provide a more holistic picture.”
The findings reveal a clear hierarchy. Role ambiguity alone is responsible for 69.7% of the drop in work engagement, and 80.7% of the decline in task performance. This means when employees don’t understand what is expected of them, their willingness to show up, engage, and perform drops sharply.
Why ambiguity hits hardest
Part of what makes role ambiguity so corrosive, Sawhney explains, is that it leaves employees without a path forward. Unlike overload, which can sometimes be managed by extending deadlines or redistributing tasks, ambiguity is a more existential problem.
“When you have a lot of work to do, you may be able to extend deadlines in certain circumstances, seek assistance and so on,” she said. “But with ambiguity, when you don’t understand what you need to do, you really just can’t do your job. Seeking that clarity is critical in ensuring your well-being and ensuring more positive outcomes.”
And the downstream effects are significant. Role ambiguity is linked to declines in job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship behaviors, the kind of discretionary effort that makes teams function well. If success is undefined, employees stop trying to achieve it.
Role conflict, on the other hand, emerged as the biggest driver of turnover intentions.
“Role conflict is essentially getting different or competing information from one supervisor,” Sawhney said. “On one hand, the supervisor may ask them to do a job a certain way. The next day they may ask them to do it slightly differently.”
That inconsistency, she says, is what most drives employees toward the exit.
Clarity doesn’t have to be complicated
The good news is that the antidote doesn’t require a large investment from organizations. Sawhney points to a handful of practical, low-cost interventions they can implement immediately.
Onboarding and orientation programs are a strong starting point, particularly those that go beyond administrative logistics to clearly spell out role expectations. Regular feedback, rather than the traditional once-a-year performance review, is equally important.
READ MORE: Employers warned: Fix your people strategy or lose the best talent
“Providing feedback in a more consistent manner, in a more regular fashion, rather than just waiting for performance appraisals once a year, means employees know where they’re not doing well and what they can do to perform better,” she said.
Above all, Sawhney advocates for frequent, low-stakes check-ins between managers and their direct reports.
“It doesn’t take a lot. It could be five minutes a month,” she said. “Just having these regular check-ins can ensure that the supervisor is on the same page as the employee. It doesn’t have to be hours of training or numerous surveys.”
Employees also have a role to play, Sawhney said. Asking more questions, seeking out informal mentors, and proactively requesting clarity are all strategies that can reduce the burden of ambiguity, even in organizations where leadership is slow to act.
An old problem with new urgency
The timing of this research matters. As organizations navigate layoffs, AI integration, and evolving hybrid work arrangements, job roles are shifting faster than clarity can keep up. When roles are restructured or responsibilities redistributed, the default is often ambiguity.
Sawhney emphasized that all of these stressors aren’t new. What is new is the scale of the evidence now available.
“These are not novel stressors by any means,” she said. “But let’s not put these on the back burner because these are still the most fundamental stressors that employees face across the board. Doesn’t matter if you’re in healthcare, aviation, or education. You’re very likely experiencing these stressors. We need to bring these back to the forefront.”
The research is unambiguous, even if the roles aren’t. Clarity costs nothing. The alternative, as 60 years of data makes clear, costs a great deal.
