Quiet cracking: Your best employee may not be ‘fine, thanks’ – UAE voices on masked workplace burnout

'Quietly' is the word AI can't stop using and you're right to wince at it on sight.

Yet, here, for once, it's the right one.

'Quiet cracking' is the workplace crisis nobody notices, because on paper there isn't one. Emails answered by the dozen. Meetings on meetings, smiles on smiles. Tasks ticked off, often brilliantly. Targets met. And behind the out-of-office smile, someone is slowly coming apart, until the day it all gives way at once.

You are there, and yet you are not there at all.

“You’ve cracked, and you’re staring at the pieces, refusing to admit that you have,” says Dubai-based Shivani (name changed on request). “That does sound dramatic, but it’s true. I’ve gone through that and I think I’m going through it right now. Working through a burnout, because I have a fear of letting people down.”

The irony, as she says, is that somewhere, you hope that someone has noticed enough to help you out. Maybe they did, or maybe they’re cracking themselves.

It’s a rather bleak reminder that performance and wellbeing are not always linked, as Dr Lucy Bolton, Assistant Professor in Business Psychology at Heriot-Watt University Dubai, notes. “Many people keep delivering,” she says, “Long after they have stopped being okay. The question is why they so rarely say so.”

The person who gets things done

What do you do when you’re always the dependable and reliable one? A sense of pride surges alongside the inevitable exhaustion, as Shivani says. “I won’t lie, I do feel this pride when people say, ‘Oh, give it to her, she will get it done.’ And I do. I just keep taking on things that people give me, because I don’t want to let them down.”

And so, she stays silent. Dubai-based Kavya Singh admits that, in her first job, she was ‘desperate’ to be seen as the one doing things. “I thought, that’s how it all worked. That’s what you do, to be seen. People laughed at me, but they also knew that I was good at what I did. And then I lost sight of myself, because I was so intent on pleasing my managers.”

She jokingly refers to a common workplace meme: "When your boss says, 'we will somehow get it done. And you are the somehow.' I have been the 'somehow' so often that it was such a struggle to break out of it."

And once, when she did try to let her managers know, she got the response: “You should know when to stop.” Then work was taken away from her altogether.

So, she decided to stay silent.

This silence is entwined with identity, as Karin Drane, founder of Curveball Events & Talents, notes. A person who builds a reputation around being capable and dependable can, over time, find that reputation almost inseparable from their identity. “They're the person who gets things done. They solve problems. They deliver,” she says. “So admitting, ‘Actually, I'm struggling,’ can almost feel like contradicting the identity they've built at work.”

There’s a reason for this, and it didn’t begin at the office. Dr Diana Maatouk, a clinical psychologist at The Hummingbird Clinic, explains that people grow up believing that their worth is determined by their accomplishments, rather than their emotional state. “For people raised on that belief, saying ‘I’m not okay’ is not only daunting; it feels alien, akin to a language they were never taught to articulate.”

And, they are assailed by practical fears, too. What if you’re seen as less dependable? What if you’re passed over for opportunities? It’s an insecurity that seeps in, as Dr Maatouk notes. The admission of overwhelm may be read as weakness, or as something that will simply pile more pressure onto already-stretched colleagues.

The cruel irony is that the better someone copes, the less anyone notices. Elizabeth Rayment, founder and CEO of Your Mind Media, adds that some high performers simply become very good at managing pressure, so from the outside everything looks completely fine.

And so, the better they are at performing under pressure, the easier it is for everyone around them to miss that something is wrong, adds Drane. “The work is still getting done, so we assume the person is fine. Those are two very different things.”

The reliability trap

What’s even more disconcerting: People tend to hold you to higher standards if you’re a high performer. And so, they can continue performing well long after their wellbeing has started to suffer. Dubai-based Catherine Grant (name changed on request) calls it an endless cycle, one that led her to finally quit her job and take a break for six months. “I resent the word ownership now. I kept taking ‘ownership’ of everything, till I couldn’t anymore.”

As she says: “In a job, you’ll always hear the words: ‘Take ownership.’ And it’s not a bad thing, but then you need to see where the lines get blurred. Are you doing your job and everyone else’s job?”

Rayment sees the same pattern from the founder’s chair. A strong sense of ownership is a fantastic trait, she says, “But it can also mean they sometimes take on more than they need to because they know they can handle it.”

The danger is that leaders, without meaning to, make it worse. Part of her job, as she sees it, is to ensure her best people’s reliability isn’t unintentionally rewarded with an ever-increasing workload.

Dependability becomes a double-edged sword. Those who handle their load well are assigned more of it, and few people think to check in on them, including the individuals themselves.

As Dr Maatouk notes, such people carry forth a harsh inner critic: they treat their own discomfort as an obstacle to push through, rather than a signal worth heeding. She invokes the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s notion of the ‘false self’: a competent, adaptable front that hides more vulnerable feelings beneath it. It can hold for a long time, but not forever. “These individuals often appear to experience a sudden breakdown, although the reality is they have been silently enduring their struggles for an extended period.”

Reading the micro-signals

If you know your team well enough, you notice the micro-signals before you see them in the work, explains Drane. "They might become unusually short in their communication, withdraw socially, look exhausted or stop taking the same care of themselves. Sometimes it’s nothing dramatic at all. They’re simply not quite themselves.

What to look out for, according to the experts

• A change in personality: Someone who is normally engaged may become quiet in meetings, withdraw from colleagues or lose interest in things they usually enjoy.

• Irritability: Small things start getting under their skin, or their usual patience seems to disappear.

• Fading enthusiasm: Work that once energised them begins to feel like something they simply have to get through.

• Difficulty switching off: They remain mentally connected to work long after the working day has ended.

• Presenteeism: They are at work and completing tasks, but are struggling to function at their usual level.

• Perfectionism: They may become increasingly hard on themselves or spend far longer than necessary getting things right.

• Slower work: Tasks that would normally take an hour suddenly take much longer, even when the workload has not changed.

• Longer hours, without greater output: As Maatouk notes, people may compensate for the extra effort everything now requires by working longer.

• Relief rather than satisfaction: Finishing a project feels like escaping something rather than achieving something.

• Physical signs: Poor sleep, muscle tension, headaches and frequent minor illnesses can all accompany prolonged stress.

• Changing ways of unwinding: Someone may increasingly rely on caffeine, alcohol or screens to switch off.

• Weekends become recovery time: Instead of feeling refreshed after the weekend, they spend it recovering enough to start the next week.

'I'm just tired' is the line to listen for. As Dr Maatouk puts it: "Frequently, individuals might say, 'I'm just tired.' However, if that fatigue persists despite taking time to rest, it serves as a significant warning sign."

Making it safe to say

If employees won't raise the issue, someone else has to. "It starts with making these conversations completely normal," says Rayment. In practice, that can mean asking how someone is coping with their workload, not just whether the work is done.

In a healthy team, she says, "I have a lot on at the moment – can we look at priorities?" should be a routine request, not something to apologise for.

Dr Maatouk puts the weight on habit rather than policy. A regular one-to-one in which the question is actually meant makes it easier to answer with more than "fine". So does a manager who admits they've had a rough month too.

The response matters as much as the question. Someone who admits they're struggling and gets practical help, not scepticism, is far more likely to speak up next time. And the colleagues who never complain deserve a closer look; they may simply be the best at getting on with it.

It starts at the top. "If you're open about your own challenges, your team is much more likely to feel comfortable doing the same," says Rayment.

None of this turns the office into a therapy session. The point is that someone can admit things are getting too much before they reach breaking point, and hear what Rayment calls the right response: "Let's work through this together."

Nor does it mean lowering the bar. "There is nothing wrong with being ambitious. I run a very performance-driven company and I expect a lot from my team," says Drane. Her rule: as targets rise, so should the support behind them.

Everyone has stretches when they can give 120 per cent, and stretches when life gets in the way. "Good leadership is knowing the difference between someone who has stopped caring and someone who needs you to carry a little more weight for a while," she says.

Systems, not slogans

Singh scoffs at the word ‘resilience’. “I’m so tired of it. It’s such an easy, lethargic way to say, ‘You figure it out yourself,’ as you get drowned in more work.” As she grimly says, it’s the most overused word.

Bolton adds that resilience is not simply an individual responsibility.

Sometimes, the problem is simply that there is too much to do.

So, how does one work through this? Maatouk argues that companies need to look beyond whether the work is getting done and ask what it is taking to get there. How long are people working? Are messages still arriving late at night? Is the same person continually picking up extra tasks?

Clear expectations around after-hours messages can help. So can confidential support, such as an employee assistance programme or insurance that covers therapy. Dr Maatouk also suggests looking at what the company rewards. Someone who consistently does good work within normal hours should not be less valued than the person who stays late every night.

For Rayment, it begins with clarity. People need to know what matters most, what is expected of them and when priorities have changed. Workloads also need to be revisited as a business grows. As she puts it, “What was manageable six months ago may need to be reassessed.”

Sooner than feels necessary

Speaking up early can matter, but that does not mean turning it into another instruction employees have to perform correctly.

Don’t wait for a crisis before starting the conversation, adds Rayment. “Your employer can't help with something they don't know about, and often a relatively small conversation early on can make a very big difference.”

Bolton echoes the sentiment: Talk to someone “sooner than feels necessary” – a manager, colleague, coach or trusted friend – before a temporary challenge hardens into something more serious.

Dr Maatouk urges people to acknowledge persistent fatigue rather than simply pushing through it, and to be honest with someone they trust about how they are actually feeling. “Struggling,” she says, “does not signify a lack of strength; rather, it serves as a signal that a change is necessary.” Seeing a psychologist early can also help people understand why they keep pushing past their limits.

Drane’s advice: “Tell someone.” It is worth remembering, she says, that “the person sitting across from you has almost certainly struggled at some point in their own life too, even if you've never seen it.”

And if the response is dismissive, that tells you something about the workplace, too. It may mean the conversation needs to happen elsewhere – with another manager, a trusted colleague, HR or a professional outside the organisation.

Sometimes the problem is not that an employee has failed to cope; it is that the system has asked too much for too long.