Most organizations are asking the wrong question about burnout.
They ask: “How do we help people recover?”
A better question is: “What are we doing, intentionally or not, that’s causing people to burn out in the first place?”
Burnout isn’t solved with wellness webinars or happy hours. It’s built into the system. Into how we design work, structure power, distribute opportunity, and measure success.
That’s why I created the RESTORE+ Workplace Design™ framework, a systemic approach to preventing burnout at the root. It’s grounded in organizational science, real-world leadership experience, and the lived reality of professionals who are exhausted from doing everything right and still not getting anywhere.
Of the seven RESTORE+ pairings, the one I see most misunderstood yet the most powerful is Equity + Empowerment.
They’re structural levers that shape everything from performance and engagement to trust and retention. And most companies aren’t pulling them at all.
What Equity + Empowerment Mean
Equity means the system isn’t rigged. It means people have access to opportunities, recognition, and growth based on contribution and potential, not proximity to power or performance politics.
It also means we acknowledge historic and ongoing disparities and actively work to correct them.
Empowerment is about what people are able to do within that system.
Do they have the tools, clarity, safety, and permission to lead from where they are? Or are they stuck waiting to be picked?
These two concepts are inseparable.
You can’t empower someone in a system that still holds all the power at the top. And you can’t claim equity if people don’t have the ability to shape their own experience inside the system.
When done well, equity and empowerment become the engine for sustainable, meaningful work.
They restore agency. And agency is a burnout prevention tool that most organizations don’t even realize they’re withholding.
How Equity + Empowerment Impact Burnout
Burnout is often driven by working in a system that ignores your voice, erases your contributions, or boxes you into roles you’ve outgrown.
When people don’t see a path forward—when effort doesn’t lead to influence—they start to check out. Not because they don’t care. Because the system has made caring feel pointless.
Here’s what happens when equity and empowerment are missing:
- People stay in survival mode, managing others’ expectations instead of their own growth.
- The same few voices dominate decision-making, limiting innovation.
- Employees self-silence or overperform out of fear, not clarity.
- High-potential talent either leaves or burns out trying to prove themselves in a system that was never built with them in mind.
Now, imagine the opposite:
- Everyone knows what success looks like and how to get there.
- Workloads, rewards, and recognition are distributed fairly.
- People can speak up, shape their role, and lead projects without waiting for a promotion.
- Contribution is matched with trust.
That’s what equity and empowerment look like in action. And that’s what makes them burnout-resistant by design.
What Most Companies Get Wrong
Many companies have good intentions. But their approaches to equity and empowerment often fall short because they:
- Confuse representation with equity (diverse hires, same barriers).
- Mistake delegation for empowerment (passing off work, not decision-making).
- Focus on individual development without fixing broken systems.
- Celebrate autonomy but punish people when they actually exercise it.
These missteps lead to disillusionment, especially among the very people you’re trying to retain.
You can’t empower employees in a system that doesn’t trust them. And you can’t build trust without fairness.
That’s why these two have to go hand in hand.
How to Make Equity + Empowerment Real
This isn’t about launching another initiative. It’s about shifting the core architecture of how your workplace operates—from who holds power to how opportunities are distributed to how decisions are made and measured.
Here are practical ways to start embedding equity and empowerment in everyday operations:
Conduct Equity Audits That Go Beyond Numbers
Equity isn’t just about how many women or people of color you’ve hired. It’s about who has access to influence and growth.
Go beyond surface-level representation and examine:
- Who gets stretch assignments and career-advancing work.
- Who is invited to weigh in on key decisions.
- Who receives formal and informal mentorship or sponsorship.
- Whose performance reviews lead to real development opportunities.
Disaggregate the data across dimensions like role, race, gender identity, disability status, and tenure. Then, treat the gaps you find not as flaws to fix quietly, but as signals for system-level redesign.
Decentralize Power Without Losing Accountability
Empowerment isn’t a free-for-all. It requires intentional, shared structures that allow more people to lead:
- Let team members co-design agendas and facilitate meetings.
- Launch employee-led innovation sprints or pilot projects.
- Use collaborative goal-setting, not just top-down OKRs.
- Close the loop: Act on employee input and report back on what changed.
This creates more distributed ownership and cultivates an active culture of trust, experimentation, and improvement.
Redesign Roles with Flexibility Built In
Most job descriptions focus on static responsibilities, not evolving strengths. To prevent burnout and boost engagement:
- Regularly revisit roles based on capacity, team needs, and individual growth.
- Create space within the role for employees to shape 10–20% of their responsibilities based on curiosity, energy, or purpose.
- Reframe performance evaluations to include skill development, not just output.
When roles feel like cages instead of platforms, people disengage. Give them room to breathe and build.
Teach Managers How to Share Power
Managers can either be bottlenecks or bridges to empowerment. Most are promoted for technical skill, not people leadership. It’s time to change that:
- Train them to coach, not control.
- Normalize transparent conversations about power, privilege, and positionality.
- Create systems that reward relational leadership, not just performance metrics.
- Equip them to interrupt inequity in real time.
A burnout-resistant culture depends on managers who see leadership as stewardship.
Make Empowerment Measurable
If you want empowerment to be real, you have to measure it like you mean it. Track things like:
- Percent of employees who feel they have decision-making authority in their role.
- Number of team-led initiatives or changes launched in the past quarter.
- Promotion rates of underrepresented employees into strategic or revenue-driving roles.
- How often feedback is gathered, and more importantly, acted on.
These are not vanity metrics. They reflect how power and opportunity actually move inside your organization.
Your Culture Already Has a Design. Is It Working?
Whether you’re intentional or not, your workplace is designed in a way that either distributes power or concentrates it.
If your employees are tired, checked out, or cycling through burnout, it’s worth asking: What would need to change for people to feel both supported and in control of their experience here?
Because that’s where real change starts—not with a motivational speaker or a meditation app, but with how your systems are built.
Equity and empowerment aren’t extras. They’re your foundation.
And when they’re strong, everything else, engagement, retention, innovation, performance, becomes a whole lot easier.
Tara Kermiet is a burnout prevention and leadership resilience strategist with over 15 years of experience in leadership development. As the founder and Chief Balance Officer of Tara Kermiet Consulting, LLC, she partners with high-achieving professionals and forward-thinking organizations to build burnout-resistant careers, teams, and workplaces.
Tara is the creator of the Burnout-Resistant Leadership Ecosystem™, a comprehensive system that empowers leaders to reclaim their capacity, align their values, and design careers and organizations that thrive without burnout. Her proprietary frameworks include the 5 Cs Driving Burnout™, RESTORE+ Workplace Design™, Agency Activation Method™, Aligned Leadership Compass™, and the 6-Step Burnout Recovery System™.
With a strengths-based, human-centered approach to sustainable workplace-design, Tara equips her clients with the tools to rethink the way they work, lead, and live. Whether she’s coaching individuals or consulting with organizations, her mission is simple: to help ambitious leaders maintain their edge without losing themselves (or their people) in the process.
For a consultation on implementing the RESTORE+ Workplace Design™ framework in your workplace, contact Tara Kermiet – Leadership Coach and Consultant at hello@tarakermiet.com or visit https://tarakermiet.com/corporate-services/.
