Stress Is the Hidden Cost Behind Disengagement at Work

This article draws on insights from a wellbeing assessment involving 4,217 employees across multiple organisations in Mauritius, anchored in both local realities and global evidence.

The findings reveal that stress and early burnout steadily erode capacity long before engagement challenges become visible and that this pattern is more pronounced where stress remains unspoken rather than systemically addressed.

Specifically, this article explores:

• How stress has become a normalised feature of working life in Mauritius

• Why employees can remain operational while their capacity is steadily depleted

• How stress and early burnout drive disengagement — not the other way around

• The real, often hidden cost of disengagement at organisational level

• Why stress and burnout remain difficult topics to address openly

• Why January often reactivates existing stress patterns rather than resetting them

• What responsibility this places on leadership and organisational structures
  
  

The goal is not to place blame, nor to dismiss existing engagement efforts — but to bring visibility to a factor that quietly shapes performance, engagement, and sustainability across organisations.

1- What the Data Shows in Mauritius

Across the 4,217 employees assessed, several patterns stand out:

• The vast majority report that stress negatively impacts their work and performance

• A significant proportion experience frequent stress, worry, or frustration

• Burnout is not rare many employees indicate having experienced it

• Most employees feel that current organisational efforts do not meaningfully reduce stress

• Structured stress or burnout prevention initiatives are largely absent

These findings are not isolated. They appear consistently across key sectors of the Mauritian economy.

Stress is no longer the exception. It has become part of the working norm.

2- The Hidden Cost of Disengagement: Made Practical

Organisations frequently focus on disengagement as a surface problem but the data shows it is a lagging indicator of stress-driven capacity depletion rather than its root cause. Productivity. Morale. Culture.

But at organisational level, the impact is far more concrete. A simple reality sits underneath most engagement challenges:

Organisations pay 100% of salary, even when stress reduces an employee’s effective capacity.

This isn’t a theoretical argument, it’s a practical reality: when stress reduces an employee’s effective capacity, organisations are still paying full cost while receiving less usable performance and cognitive bandwidth.

This is not a question of effort or intent.
It is a question of how much usable capacity stress leaves available.

Using cautious, locally grounded assumptions based on the Mauritian context::

• Average monthly salary in Mauritius: ~MUR 43,000

• Annual salary per employee: ~MUR 516,000

• Conservative estimate of capacity reduction due to sustained stress: 10–15%

• Assume that even one third of employees are affected

  
  

This does not mean these employees are disengaged in attitude. It means they are operational, but functioning with reduced clarity, focus, emotional bandwidth, and resilience.

What that translates to in practice

When stress reduces effective capacity across teams, the impact is rarely visible as a single event it shows up in slower execution, rework, delayed decisions, and leadership bandwidth lost to constant pressure management.

1. One employee operating at 10–15% reduced capacity represents ~MUR 50,000–75,000 of lost value per year

2. In a company of 100 employees, if even 30 employees are affected, the cumulative impact quickly reaches ~MUR 1.5–2.2 million annually

3. In a company of 1,000 employees, the same dynamics scale into ~MUR 15–22 million per year
   
   

This cost does not appear as a single line item. It is embedded across slower execution, reduced discretionary effort, increased errors and rework, emotional fatigue, and declining engagement — all signs of reduced organisational capacity rather than lack of effort.

What this is and what it isn’t

This is not about people “not working hard enough”. Most stressed employees are still showing up, still delivering, still meeting expectations What organisations are absorbing is a silent performance tax — created not by lack of commitment, but by unmanaged stress steadily eroding capacity.

It is a performance tax created by unmanaged stress.

3- Why Stress Drives Disengagement — Not the Other Way Around

The assessment data shows a clear pattern:

• Higher stress → lower clarity, patience, and focus

• Ongoing worry and frustration → reduced emotional availability at work

• Early burnout symptoms → disengagement follows (stress leads, disengagement lags)

Many employees remain operational:

• They show up

• They meet deadlines

• They stay outwardly compliant
  
  

But internally, capacity is shrinking.

What makes stress particularly dangerous is that it rarely triggers immediate disengagement. Instead, employees adapt.

1. They push through.

2. They lower expectations quietly.

3. They conserve emotional energy.
   
   

Over time, this adaptive behaviour looks like disengagement but it is in fact a protective response to sustained pressure. By the time engagement visibly drops, stress has already been present for months. Engagement, in this sense, is not the cause of the problem it is the signal that capacity has already been eroded.

4 - The Global Cost And Why Mauritius Is Not Immune

Globally, the economic impact of stress and burnout is well established:

• Low engagement costs the global economy approximately USD 438 billion per year
  (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace)

• Depression and anxiety cost the global economy approximately USD 1 trillion annually in lost productivity (World Health Organization / International Labour Organization)
  
  

To put this into local context:

• Mauritius’ GDP is approximately MUR 650 billion.

• 1–2% productivity drain attributed to stress-related capacity loss

• represents: ➡️ MUR ~6–12 billion annually

  
  

This cost does not appear as a single line item. It shows up gradually in slowed execution, rising errors, emotional fatigue, disengagement, absenteeism, and eventual turnover.

Stress is not an HR issue alone. It is a systemic economic leak.

5- Why Stress and Burnout Remain Taboo

Despite the data, stress is rarely addressed directly.

Why?

Employees often:

• avoid speaking openly about stress

• personalise the experience (“I should cope better”)

• adapt rather than escalate

  
  

Organisations often:

• prioritise outputs rather than understand capacity and its limits

• treat stress as an individual issue

• rely on isolated wellbeing initiatives
  
  

This creates a silent agreement: stress is endured, burnout is hidden, and performance is maintained — until it no longer can be.

The absence of conversation is not the absence of the problem. It is simply how the problem survives.

6- The January Risk: Same Year, Same Stress

January often brings:

• New targets

• Renewed expectations

• Full workloads — without recovery
  
  

Yet most organisations return to the same organisational conditions that created stress in the first place. January rarely introduces new stress — it re-activates existing patterns.

Employees return rested, but to the same structures, expectations, and emotional load. Without changes to how pressure is managed day-to-day, stress quickly re-accumulates.

This is why early-year motivation often fades by February or March: recovery occurred, but capacity was never rebuilt. Without intentional structural adjustments, January becomes a reset in calendar only — not in reality.

7- A Leadership Responsibility

This is not about blame. It is about visibility, responsibility, and organisational design.

Addressing stress is not an exercise in individual resilience it is a leadership and systems challenge. It requires redesigning how pressure is understood, communicated, and managed not just how engagement surveys are interpreted. it is about designing environments that sustain capacity.

Leadership responsibility lies not in removing pressure altogether, but in understanding:

• where pressure becomes overload

• when stress shifts from motivating to draining

• how early burnout forms beneath steady performance
  
  

When stress is treated as a business variable, not a personal weakness, engagement becomes a realistic outcome rather than an aspirational target.

8- Closing Thought

Stress is not a soft issue — it is a performance and capacity issue hiding in plain sight. Organisations that recognise this early protect not only wellbeing but capacity, engagement, and long-term results.