Burnout isn't personal, it's structural

The solution isn’t self-care, it’s shared ownership.

Julia can talk for an hour straight without interruption. She has a collection of vanity eyeglasses and dresses up for work every day, even though she works from home. While she was a client of mine at my marketing firm, we spent hundreds of hours together over Zoom. I learned that she loves Harry Potter, cooking, and talking about cooking. During the pandemic, she and I joined a virtual cook-along, together, led by Samin Nosrat, where we made lasagna. When we caught up afterwards, Julia talked for twenty minutes about the art of making béchamel.

She has a sharp sensibility, a clear self-awareness, and since I’ve known her, she’s been in charge of marketing at three different companies. I’ve watched her evolve from an enthusiastic employee to a depressed and cynical leader. And the degradation of her spirit is entirely due to the nature of work in the United States. In one especially emotional call, she lamented its absurdity,

“It doesn’t matter how high you climb, the ridiculousness of business remains. Everything is so urgent and then meaningless at the same time. And what I’ve discovered is, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re an executive assistant or a VP; it’s that way all the time. We’re told it’s normal to be thrashing around like this. But I think it’s ridiculous.”

Thrashing is the perfect way to describe what it’s like to spend the days of your life sprinting from task to task, in an asymmetric relationship where your sole purpose is to make someone else rich. The absence of meaning weighs heavy. For Julia, the weight caused anxiety that activated an autoimmune disease. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and had weekly migraines. She had no choice but to keep working,

“We have a board that we have to satisfy. So much of my well-being, because I need money, is reliant on rooms full of mostly men who have no interest in my well-being. Yet, I have to show up here and sacrifice some of my well-being in order to achieve my well-being. And that’s the nature of work.”

Specifically, this is the nature of work in a system where shareholder primacy rules and workers are considered “human capital”—a resource to extract energy from.

After working in this system, I burned out and went to graduate school in search of a solution that could change the conditions for workers. As part of a Master’s in Cultural Anthropology, I conducted a study on businesses that consider themselves part of the “business for good” movement. These are companies that received a B Corp Certification, a stamp that indicates that the business operates in socially and environmentally responsible ways. What I uncovered was that the companies that truly transformed workers’ lives weren’t the ones with the best DEI strategies or sustainability reports. They were the ones where employees shared ownership.

Good jobs and economic security are structurally impossible if workers don’t have ownership.

Ownership that is shared rebalances resources and the distribution of power; this creates better work environments, stronger businesses, and a more resilient economy. People can only escape wage labor when they are owners, and our country can only escape the current situation of concentration and scarcity by making ownership more accessible. Lucky for us, there are great examples of how to do that across the United States and internationally.

Shared ownership is not a utopian or experimental idea; it is a proven business model that has existed for decades—and in some cases, more than a century. Today, nearly 7,000 U.S. companies operate with employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), including widely-recognized brands like Bob’s Red Mill, King Arthur Baking Company, and Publix Super Markets. In addition, there are close to 1,000 worker cooperatives across the country. These are businesses that share ownership, profits, and governance power with the people who do the work.

One employee-owner I spoke with at StoneAge Manufacturing, an ESOP, recently said of her experience, “It is vastly different than any other job that I’ve had, where you go in, clock in, do your crap, go home, don’t think about it,” instead, “we are owners—we see what we do and how it affects the bottom line and how that affects us, which is amazing.” The control she has as an owner is meaningful: “We’re not beholden to this nebulous group of people who are calling the shots in the background. We have agency.”

At StoneAge, employee ownership delivers real financial benefits. Workers receive profit-sharing distributions twice per year, often equivalent to an entire paycheck, that they use for practical needs like debt repayment, home repairs, or car maintenance. Beyond immediate cash, employees automatically receive shares through the ESOP at no cost to them, building wealth tax-free over time. Long-tenured employees have accumulated big balances, with some using their ESOP funds to retire early or change lifestyles entirely. The ownership structure also creates unusual growth potential: employees report pay increases of $15,000 over just three years through role development. This form of business transforms work from pure wage labor into genuine wealth-building, where employees benefit directly from the company’s success rather than simply exchanging time for a wage.

Work, as it is currently organized, controlled by a few, is inhumane. Many people exist in jobs where they feel terrible and assume it’s a “them problem.” It’s not. This is a systems problem. The incentives for standard businesses prioritize capital accumulation, and that creates terrible conditions for people and the environment. So what are we all supposed to do? Here are a few ideas:

• Find a new job in an employee-owned company. You can find roles listed on employee ownership job boards or search for specific positions within ESOP and worker cooperatives by identifying companies that you want to work for.

• If your leadership is warm to new ideas, suggest starting small with open book management and basic wealth-sharing activities like profit sharing, phantom stock, shared equity, etc.

• Get involved in the employee ownership ecosystem. Learn more about the state support centers, or reach out to me, and I can point you in the right direction, depending on your interest.

The current state of work is a choice, not a law of nature. Thousands of employee-owned companies already exist—they're not experiments, they're proof. The question isn't whether shared ownership works; it's why we tolerate a system where people like Julia have to wreck their health to earn a living. We can expand what works, or we can keep asking workers to choose between their lives and their livelihoods. I know which future I'm fighting for.