Human Sustainability – Leadership in an Age of Overload

By Sarah Jenkins, Menzies Leadership Foundation

The new equation of leadership is simple: clarity plus energy equals collective resilience. In 2025, human sustainability is not a luxury — it is the foundation of the future.

Everywhere you look in 2025, exhaustion is visible. Employees are overwhelmed by relentless demands. Communities are worn down by climate disasters, rising costs of living, and growing inequality. Democracies are weary from polarisation and disinformation.

We have entered what might be called the age of overload. People are not disengaging because they lack will or interest — they are withdrawing because the pace, noise, and weight of modern systems are unsustainable. For leaders, the question is urgent: how do we design for human sustainability?

Overload at Every Level

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 shows engagement has slipped once again, with fewer workers reporting thriving wellbeing or meaningful connection to managers. Only 20% of employees globally say they are thriving at work.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 names mental health deterioration and societal polarisation as major risks. Both are amplified by systemic overload: economic precarity, climate stress, and the constant churn of digital life.

In Australia, the right to disconnect law is a signal that boundaries must be protected. Already in effect for large employers, it will extend to small businesses from August 2025 (Fair Work Ombudsman). This legislation acknowledges that human energy is finite and that dignity must be preserved. But culture change requires more than policy.

Why Human Sustainability Matters

Human sustainability is more than a wellbeing program or meditation app. It is about protecting the energy that makes leadership, innovation, and resilience possible.

Without sustainability, employees disengage, communities fragment, and institutions collapse under their own weight. With it, people can thrive, systems regain trust, and societies build resilience to shocks.

For leaders, this shift reframes responsibility. The test of leadership is not “how much more can people give?” but “how do we design systems that allow people to endure and flourish?”

Leadership Across Levels

At the individual level

Leaders must first model what it means to protect their own energy. A parent who switches off to be present with children, a CEO who visibly takes leave, a teacher who sets realistic limits on marking workloads — all signal that sustainability is wisdom, not weakness.

At the organisational level

The challenge is designing work with clarity and rhythm. Organisations must:

• Conduct noise audits to cut redundant meetings and unnecessary reporting.
• Bake sustainability metrics into performance dashboards — from burnout rates to engagement scores.
• Embed rituals of reset, such as meeting-free days, scheduled reflection time, or enforced downtime after major projects.

Critically, compliance with the right to disconnect must translate into practice. If employees feel penalised for setting boundaries, the law remains symbolic. Leaders must normalise respect for off-time as part of culture.

At the community and system level

Communities require investment in social infrastructure — libraries, local halls, sporting clubs, cultural spaces — where people replenish energy and connection. These are not luxuries but assets for resilience.

Governments can design civic participation processes that respect human limits. Citizens’ assemblies that are time-bound and supported, for example, balance legitimacy with sustainability. Investments in mental health, affordable housing, and education are all systemic interventions that safeguard human capacity.

Designing for Sustainability

• The Australian right to disconnect: By giving workers legal protection against after-hours demands, Australia joins a growing list of countries recognising that boundaries are essential. But leadership will determine whether it becomes culture, not just compliance.
• Corporate pioneers adopting four-day work weeks or meeting-free days show that reducing overload can increase productivity. Microsoft Japan’s 2019 experiment saw productivity rise by 40% — and similar pilots continue globally.
• Community resilience initiatives in flood-affected regions of NSW illustrate how rotating volunteer duties and creating shared recovery spaces reduce burnout. These approaches sustain collective energy over long crises.

What Leaders Can Do

1. Protect clarity
   Remove competing priorities and reduce noise. Clarity is one of the greatest gifts a leader can give.
2. Prioritise energy as much as output
   Measure and value sustainability indicators alongside financial ones.
3. Model balance
   Leaders must show — not just say — that they respect limits and recovery.
4. Invest in social infrastructure
   Fund and support civic spaces that replenish collective energy.

Risks of Ignoring Human Sustainability

Ignoring human sustainability has costs that compound. In organisations, it leads to attrition, reduced creativity, and reputational harm. In communities, it produces volunteer fatigue and civic disengagement. At the systemic level, brittle democracies struggle to withstand shocks, and populist forces exploit exhaustion.

Overload is not sustainable. If ignored, it doesn’t plateau — it spirals.

A New Equation for Leadership

The age of overload demands a recalibration of leadership. No longer can leaders push harder, demand more, or glorify busyness. The task now is to design conditions — in workplaces, communities, and systems — that make clarity, rhythm, and restoration possible.

This is not lowering ambition. It is safeguarding the human energy required to meet the century’s complex challenges: climate transition, geopolitical instability, technological disruption.

Without human sustainability, none of these can be met effectively. 

🔗 Research Links

• Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2025 (PDF): https://www.gallup.com/file/workplace/659528/state-of-the-global-workplace-2025-download.pdf
• WEF Global Risks Report 2025 (PDF): https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2025.pdf
• Edelman Trust Barometer 2025: https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer
• Fair Work Ombudsman – Right to Disconnect laws (Australia): https://www.fairwork.gov.au/newsroom/news/new-right-to-disconnect-laws