the brave work index
the brave work index: research-based burnout assessment for organizations who want to understand the real drivers of burnout—not just treat symptoms.
Burnout doesn’t happen randomly. It follows patterns, builds through identifiable stages, and spreads across specific organizational domains. The Brave Work Index (BWI) is a research-backed assessment that measures how people in your organization actually experience work—and where burnout risk is accelerating.
Designed for founders scaling quickly, HR leaders navigating culture drift, and organizations facing rising turnover or team fatigue, the BWI translates complex burnout dynamics into clear, actionable insights.
Why Organizations Need a Burnout Index, Now
Burnout is no longer an individual problem. It’s systemic—and it’s measurable.
The old model treats burnout as a personal resilience issue. But data shows:
Burnout is a structural problem rooted in workload, autonomy, inequity, identity threat, values misalignment, and process overload.
The Brave Work Index helps leaders see:
Where your team is depleted
Where your system is generating unnecessary pressure
Which departments or roles are at highest risk
Which interventions will actually work
How burnout is impacting performance, culture, and retention
You can’t fix what you can’t see. The BWI makes burnout visible.
Want to learn the methodology? Get the Brave Work Research Brief.
What the Brave Work Index Measures
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Burnout progresses—not overnight, but through predictable psychological and physiological shifts.
The Brave Work Index identifies whether your employees (and your system as a whole) are in:Sustainable
Strained
Chronic Stress
Acute Burnout
Systemic Burnout
This helps leaders intervene early, before people hit the point of collapse.
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Burnout doesn’t come from “too much work.” It emerges from an imbalance across eight domains:
Over-extended Capacity
Inadequate Autonomy
Low Reward-to-Effort Ratio
Low Social Support
Inequity Load
Values Misalignment
Identity Threat Load
Cognitive Fragmentation Load
The Brave Work Index reveals exactly which domains are creating risk and why certain groups are more impacted than others.
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These are the organizational conditions that quietly accelerate burnout regardless of domain.
Examples include:
Role ambiguity
Span of control overload
Process bloat
Decision-making bottlenecks
Unclear communication pathways
Amplifiers are often invisible to leadership—yet they drain capacity across the entire system. The BWI brings them to the surface.
What You Receive With a Brave Work Index Engagement
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A full organizational burnout diagnostic
Including domain scores, burnout stage distribution, and amplifier analysis.
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A heat map of burnout risk
By department, role, demographic, or tenure (as appropriate to your dataset).
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Evidence-based interpretations and recommendations
Drawn from organizational psychology, burnout research, and your company’s unique context.
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A leadership debrief session
Where we walk through insights, patterns, and recommended interventions.
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A roadmap for reducing burnout at both the individual and system level.
This is not a “wellness initiative.” This is organizational clarity.
Why the Brave Work Index Works
If you’ve ever suspected that burnout is impacting performance, trust, or retention—the Brave Work Index gives you the data you need.
Because burnout isn’t solved with:
team-building days,
meditation apps,
snacks in the office, or
one-off resilience workshops.
Burnout is solved by understanding the system.
The Brave Work Index gives leaders the map.
Brave Work gives them a partner to act on it.
Get Started
Access the Brave Work Research Brief or schedule a diagnostic call to explore the Brave Work Index for your organization.