CCA Inc.

Burnout is at an all-time high—and it’s not just an individual problem. This interactive session explores the issue from three levels: the employee experience, the leader’s role, and the organizational culture that shapes it. Together we’ll examine how stigma around mental health, fears of AI and job insecurity, and identity-based differences amplify burnout in the workplace. Participants will leave with practical strategies to reduce stigma, lead with empathy while maintaining high performance, and reimagine cultures that support sustainable success.

🏡 How to Apply This Back at Work
Don’t let this stay a roundtable insight—make it a real-world shift. Here’s how to bring these burnout-busting, data-informed strategies home:

Individual Level:
Take one daily “micro-reset” to check in with your energy—pause, breathe, and adjust your pace before burnout builds.

Leader Level:
Begin every 1:1 by asking how your team member is really doing—then listen without jumping straight to solutions.

Organizational Level:
Redesign workflows and meeting norms to support recovery time, focus, and psychological safety across teams.

Learning &amp; Development:
Embed energy management and well-being practices into all leadership and onboarding programs, not just wellness initiatives.

Talent Management:
Use engagement and pulse data to spot early signs of burnout—and intervene with workload, clarity, or connection support.

These aren’t just ideas—they’re upgrades to your people strategy. Start small, test fast, and share what works.

Everyone Is Burnt Out | Recharging Your People Strategy

future of work

Engagement &amp; Culture

Strategy

Leadership

people strategy

talent management

employee engagement

psychological safety

CHIE2025

organizational culture

employee well-being

Burnout Prevention

Sustainable Success

manendra.bhugra

ali.glaser

mental health stigma

leadership empathy

workforce recovery

L&amp;D programs

data informed strategy

Ziel Leadership

West Bend Insurance

ELE Group, LLC

Session Focus: Strategies Talent Leaders Can Use to Navigate the Challenges of the AI-Enhanced Workplace.

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This interactive roundtable provided a candid, grounded discussion on how AI is reshaping workplace learning and leadership development—with new opportunities and new risks.
As AI tools move rapidly into coaching, feedback, and employee wellbeing, senior HR leaders face a challenge: how to scale learning in ways that deepen—not flatten—human leadership capacity.

<blockquote>
“AI should build human capacity—not become a learning crutch.” — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/missy-gonzales" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michelle Gonzales</a>, West Bend Insurance.
</blockquote>
This was one of the key insights from our recent ELE peer discussion on thriving in the AI era—an open conversation on where AI is helping, where it’s creating new risks, and where HR leaders must set clear guardrails.


<hr data-start="916" data-end="919" />

<h3 data-start="921" data-end="938">Key Takeaways</h3>
<ul>
 	<li data-start="940" data-end="1129">L&amp;D must lead enterprise AI readiness L&amp;D plays a pivotal role in building organizational AI fluency and ethics awareness—equipping employees to use AI critically and responsibly.</li>
 	<li data-start="1131" data-end="1392">AI can scale learning—but not replace human interaction AI enables judgment-free practice (e.g. 360 feedback, sales coaching), but can create an illusion of safety that lacks the accountability and emotional nuance required for real leadership growth.</li>
 	<li>Data ethics and transparency are non-negotiable Employees must know exactly how their AI data is used. Without transparency, trust will erode.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
“Trust depends on transparency. Employees must know exactly how their AI data is used—or we risk losing trust altogether.” — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/deepa-kartha" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Deepa Kartha</a>.
</blockquote>
<ul>
 	<li data-pm-slice="1 1 ">AI should enhance—not diminish—human leadership capacity
AI can automate routine feedback and scale coaching, freeing humans to focus on complex judgment, empathy, and innovation. HR must design AI use that strengthens—not undermines—these capabilities.</li>
</ul>

<hr data-start="1956" data-end="1959" />

<h3 data-start="1961" data-end="2004">Practical Actions for Senior HR Leaders:</h3>
✅ Champion AI literacy: Lead the development of critical AI skills and ethics awareness across your organization.
✅ Set clear data standards: Collaborate with legal and data teams to ensure AI data practices are transparent and trusted.
✅ Design human-centric learning: Use AI to enhance—not replace—leadership capabilities like judgment, empathy, and connection.
✅ Foster critical engagement: Encourage employees to challenge AI outputs, avoiding blind acceptance.
✅ Watch for learning crutches: Regularly evaluate where AI is helping—and where it may be dulling human leadership skills.


<hr data-start="2628" data-end="2631" />
AI is now embedded in how employees learn, reflect, and grow—but it brings new complexity.
HR leaders cannot delegate this responsibility to IT or data teams alone. How we frame, govern, and design AI use in leadership and learning will shape the future of trust, culture, and leadership readiness.
We must ensure that AI supports—not undermines—critical human leadership capabilities: judgment, empathy, courage, and connection.


[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="613"]<a href="https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/HBR-2025-Gen-AI-Use-Cases-1st-Wellbeing.jpg" alt="" width="613" height="592" /></a> Source: Infographic from <a href="https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025 (HBR April, 2025)</a>[/caption]
The question isn’t whether we use AI. The question is: will we use it well? Share with us on ELE <a href="https://www.ele.llc/idea-exchange" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Idea Exchange</a>.

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Thriving in the AI Era: Employee Wellbeing, Mental Resilience, and Burnout Prevention

Digital &amp; AI

dirk.tussing

kyle.swanson

learning culture

leadership development

talent development

missy.gonzales

eduardo.burgos

katrina.williams

critical thinking

marty.murrillo

guillermo.gutierrez

continuous learning

reskilling

matt.sernaker

HR leadership

AI in Learning

HR strategies

AI ethics

erin.joslin

organizational learning

team communication

knowledge sharing

innovation culture

teaming techniques

AI for Wellbeing

nicole.defalco

AI Coaching

2Q2025

adam.walleser

human-centric AI

L&amp;D strategy

deepa.kartha

AI-enhanced leadership

AI literacy

data privacy

leadership readiness

trust in AI

AI is reshaping how we work—faster decisions, leaner processes, smarter tools. But for employees, the pace of transformation often feels more destabilizing than empowering. What’s accelerating is change. What’s not? Recovery. And while organizations rush to optimize workflows, the human systems that sustain them—well-being, trust, psychological safety—are showing signs of strain.

<blockquote>
“When people feel genuinely cared for, trust and engagement soar.” -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/missy-gonzales" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michelle Gonzales</a>, West Bend Insurance
</blockquote>
<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-43026" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Wellbeing-in-AI-Era.jpg" alt="Thriving in the AI Era: Employee Wellbeing at ManpowerGroup" width="2352" height="1568" />
This session was a wake-up call for senior talent leaders: Your AI strategy will fail if your people don’t feel safe, skilled, and seen.


<hr class="" data-start="869" data-end="872" />

<h3 class="" data-start="874" data-end="900">🔑 Key Takeaways:</h3>
<ul data-start="902" data-end="1762">
 	<li class="" data-start="902" data-end="1043">
AI creates uncertainty, not just efficiency. Employees fear irrelevance or job loss, especially without a clear roadmap for upskilling.
</li>
 	<li class="" data-start="1045" data-end="1378">
Well-being drives readiness. When employees feel cared for, they engage more deeply and adapt more confidently. That care can’t be performative—it has to be embedded in everyday decisions, leadership behaviors, and cultural norms.
</li>
 	<li class="" data-start="1380" data-end="1499">
Resistance is rarely willful—it’s about capability. Most hesitation stems from lack of skills, not unwillingness.
</li>
 	<li class="" data-start="1501" data-end="1621">
ERGs and focus groups unlock real-time solutions. During COVID and now AI, listening remains a high-leverage tool.
</li>
 	<li class="" data-start="1623" data-end="1762">
Small, peer-led learning spreads faster than top-down mandates. Culture changes through shared curiosity—not executive announcements.
</li>
</ul>

<hr class="" data-start="1764" data-end="1767" />
Leaders can’t afford to treat well-being like a box to check. When care is authentic, outcomes improve—retention, productivity, loyalty. The organizations that thrived through crisis didn’t just offer benefits; they listened, responded with empathy, and co-created support systems that met employees where they were. The same approach applies in today’s AI environment. People aren’t asking for perfection—they’re asking to be prioritized.

<blockquote data-start="720" data-end="800">
“Most resistance to AI isn’t refusal—it’s a skills gap.” -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/guillermo-gutierrez" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Guillermo Gutierrez</a>
</blockquote>
This shift also demands reframing how we interpret resistance. Employees aren’t pushing back because they’re change-averse—they’re overwhelmed. And when AI tools are dropped into workflows without a learning pathway or psychological safety, shutdown is the natural response. It’s not about forcing adoption—it’s about creating capability and confidence.


<hr class="" data-start="2655" data-end="2658" />

<h3 class="" data-start="2660" data-end="2712">🔧 Practical Actions for HR Talent Leaders:</h3>
<ol data-start="2714" data-end="3265">
 	<li class="" data-start="2714" data-end="2830">
Activate ERGs to co-design support plans for employee stress, learning, and inclusion in AI transformation.
</li>
 	<li class="" data-start="2831" data-end="2944">
Launch short, gamified AI learning cohorts that encourage peer-to-peer exploration, not forced training.
</li>
 	<li class="" data-start="2945" data-end="3061">
Coach leaders to communicate using terms like “evolve” and “experiment” instead of “disrupt” and “replace.”
</li>
 	<li class="" data-start="3062" data-end="3171">
Spotlight micro-successes in AI adoption from frontline employees to foster confidence and momentum.
</li>
 	<li class="" data-start="3172" data-end="3265">
Make well-being visible and vocal again. Don’t wait for burnout—design for resilience.
</li>
</ol>
AI adoption isn’t just a digital challenge—it’s a cultural one. And the leaders who get it right won’t be the ones with the best tech stack. They’ll be the ones who remembered this: supporting people is the transformation.
Put care and capability at the center—and your organization will not only adapt but thrive.

Thriving in the AI Era: Employee Wellbeing, Mental Resilience & Burnout Prevention

Integrated Talent Management

Future of Work

digital transformation

Change Management

inna.conner

peer-learning

AI in HR

employee wellbeing

Skills Gap

ERGs

Human-Centered Leadership

wise2025

Session Focus: Strategies Talent Leaders Can Use to Navigate the Challenges of the AI-Enhanced Workplace

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This interactive roundtable will surface practical strategies for balancing AI's accelerating impact with the workforce's human needs. From managing emotional strain to embedding learning and reflection into daily workflows, we’ll explore how talent leaders can shape healthier, more adaptive workplaces in the GenAI era.

<blockquote>
"With GenAI now being used more for therapy and emotional support than even idea generation (per HBR’s 2025 report shared in Mike Hruska’s ELE keynote), it’s clear that wellbeing is no longer a side conversation—it’s central to how many of us now work."
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
To community-source best practices, we’ll explore questions like:
<ol>
 	<li>Why is therapy and companionship now the #1 GenAI use case, according to Harvard Business Review (April 2025)?</li>
 	<li>How are organizations using GenAI to relieve pressure in emotionally and cognitively demanding roles?</li>
 	<li>What does “Authentic Intelligence” look like when wellbeing—not just efficiency—is the goal?</li>
 	<li>How can we build in moments of recovery and reflection wherever AI touches daily work?</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
“Most resistance to AI isn’t refusal—it’s a skills gap.” -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/guillermo-gutierrez" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Guillermo Gutierrez</a>
</blockquote>
With GenAI now driving both learning and emotional support, let's embed micro-moments of reflection, curiosity, and calm into the tools people already use every day!
<a href="https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-43126" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/HBR-2025-Gen-AI-Use-Cases-1st-Wellbeing.jpg" alt="Wellbeing - 2025 Top 10 Gen AI Use Cases (HBR)" width="567" height="548" /></a>
Source: Infographic from <a href="https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025 (HBR April, 2025)</a>


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This session will offer HR Talent leaders actionable insights from industry leaders on transforming rigid structures into adaptive networks that empower employees across all levels.
ELE produces this Learning Circle: Reskilling Talent Development.

ELE's <a title="ELE's Idea Exchange" href="/idea-exchange/">Idea Exchange</a>: Collaborate online with your peers.

single-event

Your Teams

Learning Circles

Complimentary

online event

complimentary event

All In! The 28-Day Reset by executive coach Ali Glaser offers a practical, science-backed roadmap to help leaders recharge without burning out. Instead of overhauling your life, Glaser guides you to identify 3–5 small, daily actions that restore energy across four key domains—physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.
With stories, reflection prompts, and simple tracking tools, this reset builds habits that align with your values, sharpen your focus, and fuel sustainable performance. It’s a playbook for leaders who want to bring their best self to work, relationships, and life—without sacrificing well-being.
Glaser, a veteran coach and senior leader, has spent decades helping executives and teams thrive. Her All In! philosophy is about showing up fully engaged and leading with clarity and confidence—day after day.
Curious? This isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters—better.

All In! The 28 Day Reset: A Daily Commitment to Being at Your Best

Coaching

yolanda.mangram

leadership coaching

Professional Growth

Strategic HR

executive coaching

peak performance

mindful leadership

resilience training

well-being in the workplace

behavioral psychology

dan.kwong

jerry.oliveira

cliff.cheek

“A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly.

There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

Performance Improvement

productivity

resilience building

stress management

laura.sandera

Mindfulness in the Workplace

High-Performance Teams

Focus and Concentration

Employee Health

Organizational Health

Wellness Programs

Energy Management

Harvard Business Review Magazine Spring 2024 How To Lead When Everyone's Exhausted

Relieve the pressure, recharge, and get the right work done.

Harvard Business Review Magazine Spring 2024 How To Lead When Everyone'S Exhausted

leadership

edward.desrosiers

work-life balance

workplace wellness

susan.c.guest

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload
<blockquote>~ Do Fewer Things. Work at a Natural Pace. Obsess over Quality. ~</blockquote>
Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

&nbsp;

Long before pinging inboxes and clogged schedules arrived, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to transform our modern jobs radically. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers – from Galileo and Isaac Newton to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe – Newport lays out the fundamental principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity and then provides step-by-step advice for cultivating a slower, more humane alternative.

&nbsp;

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management to introducing seasonal variation to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is precisely what we need.

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

tracey.wik

time management

Slow Productivity

Mindful Work

Productivity Myths

Historical Wisdom

Meaningful Accomplishment

Sustainable Productivity

Cultural Criticism

Task Management

Creative Work

Philosophical Approaches

Pragmatic Solutions

Goodall shares a perspective that resonated greatly with me - change has become a cult, treated as a sacred easy button for leaders and organizations. The problem that change initiatives often disregard the change toll or on the people and organization's resources for true transformation. What if there were fewer change initiatives and more resources/effort were put into improving what already exists? What if there was more stability and less turbulence that would allow people to thrive? Fix what's really broken, transform what's not longer relevant, and create environment and systems that honor humans.

If you’ve had enough of the constant turbulence that defines corporate life today, you’re not alone.  Learn why change is bad for people and for business, and discover how to create the stability that we all need to thrive.

For decades, “disruption” and “change” have been seen as essential to business growth and success. In this provocative and incisive book, leadership expert Ashley Goodall argues that what has become a sacred dogma is both wrong and harmful.

Whether it’s a merger or re-org or a new office layout, change has become the ultimate easy button for leaders, who pursue it with abandon, unleashing a torrent of disruption on employees. The result is what Goodall calls “life in the blender”—a perpetual cycle of upheaval, uncertainty, and unease.

The problem with change, Goodall argues, is that a culture where everything from people to processes to strategic priorities are constantly in flux exerts a psychological toll that undermines motivation, productivity, and performance.  And yet so accustomed are we to constant churn that we have become numb to its very real consequences.

Drawing on two decades spent leading HR organizations at Deloitte and Cisco, Ashley Goodall reveals why change is not the same as improvement, and how, by prioritizing team cohesion (instead of reshuffling teams at will), by using real words (rather than corporate-speak), by sharing secrets (not mission statements), by fixing only the things that are truly broken (instead of moving fast and breaking everything in sight, and more, leaders at every level can create the stability that people need to thrive.

The Problem With Change And the Essential Nature of Human Performance

corinne@innovatingresults.com

organizational development

resilience

diana.anderson

Leadership Effectiveness

Corporate Strategy

human performance

workplace stability

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