These Yukoners are among the many Canadians dealing with workplace burnout

Many Yukoners are feeling tired, and not because it's the time of year where the sun hardly sets.

Several Yukoners said they're feeling tired as a result of burnout.

Burnout is defined as a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress.

The April 2024 report from the TELUS Mental Health Index found that 42 per cent of Canadian workers felt mentally or physically exhausted at the end of their workday, with too much work cited as the top cause of burnout.

Data for the report was collected through an online survey of 3,000 people who live in Canada and are currently employed or who were employed within the past six months. The respondents were selected to be a representative sample of Canadians based on age, gender, industry, and geographic distribution.

CBC went to talk to Yukoners for a sample of how burnout is showing up in their lives.

Andrea Parent

Whitehorse resident Andrea Parent said she's worked her entire life and considers herself a highly functioning person, but for the past six months she said she's been in a rough place.

"I've had similar symptoms to burnout but never to the extent that I'm experiencing right now," Parent said.

Parent said six months ago she took medical leave from her job, where she supported people experiencing homelessness, because the workload was too much.

"It was so hard to witness people experiencing homelessness, to witness the dynamics between landlords and tenants. Like that's what totally broke me."

Although her workplace's mandate was to help vulnerable Yukoners, Parent found there wasn't much mental health support available to her.

"Eventually you hit a wall where you cannot keep pushing anymore," Parent said. "Like, all I could do was go to work and cry at my desk."

But now Parent is finding herself coming up to another challenge: the employment insurance she's been receiving is about to run out.

"I have to go back to work and there's no jobs," she said. "Also I'm starting to mentally feel better. Therefore I don't want to go back to work yet because I'm just starting to get better now. Going back to work, it takes that space away from me. Six months is not long enough to heal from burnout."

Raymond Tang

New Yukoner Raymond Tang has only called the Yukon home for two months, and he said he's already feeling the weight of burnout.

This is because he, and his wife came to the Yukon with the idea that finding a job, and a home would be easy.

"I'm a foreign worker and my work permit is almost expired," Tang said. "We need to look for a job to extend my work permit."

After looking online he read that the Yukon has the lowest unemployment rates in Canada, so he figured why not drive to Whitehorse, from Toronto to start a new chapter in his life.

But when he arrived, he learned that it wasn't going to be as easy as expected to find housing and a job.

Tang - who's worked as a truck driver, a cook and in I.T. -  found himself driving to Carcross, Haines Junction, Dawson City, looking for a job and housing for him and his wife.

Tang said he finally secured housing in Watson Lake, but without a job he kept looking for work anywhere in the Yukon that would accept a resume. After many noes, began taking odd jobs around Watson Lake.

Tang said the whole experience has left him feeling extremely burned out.

"We are Christians and pray everyday," Tang said. "But I have no ideas."

Sofia Fortin

Whitehorse resident Sofia Fortin said she's also recovering from burnout.

Last February she quit her job as an executive director after balancing work and home life became too much.

"During that time it wasn't any one particular thing that caused burnout, but a combination of things," Fortin said. "Being a parent of three. Having a neurodivergent child in my home. Leading an organization, and a fairly large one at that."

"All of the striving for certain standards and not being kind on ourselves makes everything that's hard, harder."

Fortin said quitting a job isn't necessarily the answer but for her it gave her the time to reset and focus what's most important to her.

"It's offering me what I need time-wise to take care of myself," Fortin said. "The flexibility gains that I have received have been worth the trade off for less financial stability in our family."

Fortin said she the support of her family and friends has been crucial to her recovery.

"This is not a matter of taking a week off," Fortin said. "Burnout is a total jank up of your nervous system and it takes time to undo that and reset."

'Not enough support'

The Yukon Employee's Union (YEU) said it's hard to find accurate statistics on burnout in the Yukon because employers aren't required to track that information.

YEU's president, Justin Lemphers said because of this it's very difficult to know exactly how many people are experiencing burnout and why.

But he did note that he's seen many cases of burnout from people working in the healthcare field.

Lemphers said it's important for employers and employees to take equal responsibility when it comes to noticing the signs of burnout, and to take steps to address it.

"A lot of burnout happens simply because there's not enough support within the workplace to get the work done," he said.

"That might mean there's not enough people, or there's a bout of illness, but whatever the cause at the end of the day there's simply not enough staff or organizational support to do the work in a way that's going to not exhaust people."