Founder's Note: The Cost of Not Acting
I've been wondering about the cost of inaction.
Not why organizations don't act - there are a hundred reasons for the why. What I am interested in is the cost.
Both in my personal and professional life, when I ask what it costs us when we leave things as they are, I often sigh and make myself sit in discomfort.
So let's do that together. Let's figure out the costs of NOT doing something that is hurting your team and organizations.
Figuring out the "cost of inaction" is something you probably have experience doing with other parts of your job in areas such as: IT modernization, climate risk, or change management. It's a known way of thinking and usually helps to calculate risk.
But, we don't usually apply it to workplace dynamics and conditions like:
Burnout
The breakdown of trust
Lack of belonging
These are conditions happening on your teams right now. Do you know how much that is costing you in money? In time or resources?
Money is usually the easiest to calculate so let's start there. And let's use the cost of doing nothing about work burnout.
Here we go:
A 2025 national survey of over 5,000 Canadian employees found that companies who invest in burnout prevention save roughly $3,400 per employee, per year, compared to companies that don't. There is one number we can use. (Sorry, I looked — there is no comparable US data, so let's accept this for our example) So, we can do the following math:
The Math: Overall headcount × $3,400 = your estimated annual cost of unaddressed burnout
For example, a team of 50: 50 × $3,400 = $170,000 a year
That's the cost of unaddressed burnout.
And here is how it shows up: more sick leave to deal with psychological and physical illnesses, people using PT/PTO not to recover from an illness, but to survive the week. It shows up as your leaders leaving, quietly, then suddenly. It shows up as a team that's there for the paycheck, still hitting deadlines, but the extra mile is gone.
What does that $170K number mean to you right now? Is that a lot? Or a drop in the bucket? Is it a number your leadership has decided to absorb as the price of doing business or keeping the doors open? If you are letting that $3,400 compound and accumulate, that is a choice. But more importantly, it's a cost.
While I’m pushing on this topic, I want you to understand that I don't think most leaders are choosing to ignore these issues because they don't care. It's because they have more pressing priorities right now, and this cost doesn't make it onto a spreadsheet. I'm advocating that it should at least show up as a consideration.
One that we can't ignore anymore.
With care,
Ericka
