Across most sectors of our economy — including government — workplace mental health is often addressed through programs designed to foster employee resilience. In many organizations, a resilience-first model has become the default, prioritizing helping individuals cope with stressors rather than addressing their causes.

The effect is to shift responsibility for burnout onto employees, rather than onto the conditions that produce it.

The result is predictable: employees who struggle are not seen as signals of organizational failure, but as individuals who are not coping well enough.

While the causes of work-related burnout and the solutions may differ from one sector to another, the nonprofit sector offers a clear case study of this resilience-first model and its implications.

The YMCA WorkWell 2024 Workplace Well-Being Report, based on responses from more than 13,000 nonprofit employees, illustrates the consequences of this approach in sharp relief. Fifty-eight per cent of employees reported experiencing burnout at least sometimes, and one in four reported it often or extremely often. Among leaders, 71 per cent reported experiencing burnout.

Employees are equally clear about what is driving these outcomes. They point to chronic resource constraints, unrealistic workloads, emotional strain and a persistent “do more with less” culture. Many also cite compensation gaps and lack of recognition as reasons for leaving the sector.

These are not individual challenges. They are structural conditions.

The publication of the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace in 2013 marked an important shift. It helped elevate workplace mental health as an organizational issue and contributed to a rapid expansion of related initiatives across sectors.

But in practice, much of that response has focused on the individual side of the equation. Cognitive behavioural strategies (CBT), resilience training and other coping-based tools have become commonplace in the workplace. These approaches can be useful. But they are designed to help employees respond to stress, not how that stress is produced.

This is not just a half measure, in some cases, it can exacerbate the problem. Organizations invest in helping people cope while leaving their own structures, expectations and incentives largely unchanged.

Over time, this creates a disconnect between what is promised and what is experienced.  The dissonance alone can be harmful to vulnerable employees.

In today’s dominant resilience-first paradigm, employees are encouraged to build resilience, even if the conditions that generate strain persist. In that context, the struggles of many employees risk being seen as reflecting a poor organizational fit, rather than as a normal response to unhealthy conditions. They are, in effect, treated as defective within the system and become disposable.

At the heart of many nonprofit organizations is a structural contradiction. Ambitious mandates — often shaped by funder expectations, member demands or public commitments — are not matched by the resources required to deliver them. The resulting gap is not resolved by recalibrating strategy and tactics, it is absorbed by the workers.

In that context, resilience-based programming can become a way of managing the symptoms without addressing the cause. It signals virtuous concern for employee well-being while leaving the conditions that produce burnout largely intact.

It is like applying a coat of paint over the cracks in a building’s foundation.

This is not simply a problem of organizational design within individual workplaces. It reflects the broader system of incentives and expectations that the not for profit sector operates in.

Funders contribute to it when they support ambitious programs without fully resourcing their delivery. Organizations reinforce it when they accept mandates that exceed their actual capacity. And once those commitments are made, the internal logic of survival takes hold. Scaling back becomes difficult. Acknowledging misalignment becomes institutionally difficult.

The result is a system that rewards ambition and responsiveness but often eschews the question of sustainability.

If the problem is systemic, the response must be as well.

Funders play a central role in shaping the behaviour of the sector. Through the way programs are designed, evaluated and funded, they influence what organizations prioritize — and what they defer.

A different approach would make organizational health and capacity a condition of funding, not an afterthought. That could include requiring meaningful capacity stress tests before major program commitments are approved, clearer expectations that boards demonstrate alignment between strategy and resources, and evidence that organizations have credible plans in place to manage workplace mental health.

It could also mean tying board and executive performance more directly to measurable indicators of organizational health, including staff retention and workplace well-being.

None of this would eliminate the pressures inherent in nonprofit work. But it would begin to shift the system away from one that assumes resilience and toward one that requires sustainability.

More than a decade after the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act came into force, it is worth asking whether the current framework adequately reflects these realities. The Act sets out general duties for directors, but it does not explicitly address the role of boards in overseeing the conditions that underpin workplace health.

If those responsibilities remain implicit, they will continue to be unevenly understood and applied.

Until the sector moves beyond a resilience-first model and toward one grounded in governance, accountability and aligned incentives, it will continue to treat the symptoms of burnout rather than its causes.

That shift requires naming the problem. It will require leadership from boards, and changes in how funders define success. And ultimately, as I argued in an earlier article, it may require Parliament to clarify where the responsibility for workplace mental health resides.