Stress isn't the problem. Missing recovery is.

For International Stress Awareness Week: how we look at workplace stress at Mentale Werkkracht. From the company, to the team, to you.

It's International Stress Awareness Week (2–6 November), and right after that the Netherlands has its own Week Zonder Werkstress (9–15 November). So for two weeks straight, we'll all be very aware of stress.

And I get it. You're aware. Probably very aware.. somewhere between your third back-to-back meeting and that Slack ping at 22:41.

So let me start with something that might sound odd coming from a mental health company: stress is not the problem.

I train nervous systems of groups and individuals for a living, and the body is built for stress. Activation, then recovery. On and off, many times a day, without you really noticing. It's actually part of what makes us live longer. So not a flaw ay? That's how we're designed to exist and perform.

The problem starts when the recovery part stops happening. This is rarely a dramatic turn of events. Usually it's in small, unremarkable ways. ''It'll slow down after this quarter''.. My #@S it will, I've yet to see that happen. (pardon my language).

And we're not getting better at it. Last year, In 2025, 21% of Dutch employees reported burn-out complaints. Ten years earlier that was 13% (TNO/CBS, NEA 2025). This year we're nearing 25 to 30% (full reports aren't out yet).

So here's how we look at it at Mentale Werkkracht. Recovery doesn't happen in one place. It gets built, or broken, in three layers: the system (your company), the constellation (your team) and the self (you). In that order. And the order matters, because each layer sets the boundaries for the next one.

Let's walk through them. At the end of each one I'll leave you a few mirror questions. Be honest, nobody's watching. (Well.. we'll get to that.)

1. The system: is your company nourishing, or just getting by?

The system is everything your people walk into, ranging from the building, the way work is set up all the way to company rituals, beliefs and health endorsements. It's the soil. And you can't ask people to grow in soil that's depleted.

This year the ILO estimated that psychosocial risks at work, like job strain, long hours and job insecurity, are linked to more than 840,000 deaths a year worldwide (ILO, 2026). I know, i know.. We're off to a dramatic tone here. Yet that's also a design statistic, company design if we look more closely.

At company level, we look at three things.

The workspace. Desks, natural light, plants(!!) a place to step away, a route to walk. Your space either gives people the chance to come down between moments of activation, or it keeps them switched on all day. Remember that corporate garden(open-plan) setup? Yeah.. Incredibly bad idea. It looked nice for a while though. Is there anywhere in your building where someone can actually breathe, without it looking like they're slacking?

Then there's Rituals, interactions and beliefs. Every company has rituals, even the ones that say they don't. The Monday stand-up. The way a project gets closed (or doesn't). The belief that busy means important. The research here is pretty consistent: interventions that give employees more control and more voice in how their work gets done are the ones that most reliably improve wellbeing... and don't worry. Output too.

So how about Health endorsements. The benefits. The gym subsidy, the app, the mindfulness course. Now here's an uncomfortable one. A UK study of more than 46,000 workers across 233 organisations found no evidence that individual-level offers like mindfulness, resilience training or wellbeing apps improved employee wellbeing. And a 2026 review found that organisational interventions against burnout did help, but mostly in the short term. Ouch! We're not making friends here..

Hear me out, that doesn't mean benefits are useless. It means a benefit can't do its job in a system that doesn't make room for it. A free yoga class at 12:30 doesn't help much if nobody feels they can leave their desk at 12:30.

Mirror questions

• Where in your building can someone actually relax and regulate? wind down?

• Which belief does your work schedule prove?

• If your people used every benefit you offer, would the way work is organised actually allow it?

2. The constellation: how does your team carry the load?

Let's zoom in on this level. Every team is a constellation: a group of people, their agreements, their rituals, and the way they affect each other. And they affect each other a lot. Nervous systems don't stop at the skin. One stressed person can raise the tension in a room, and one regulated person can help bring it back down. Yet one regulated person in a room full of stressed ones? Maybe not so much. The constellation always has a bigger impact than the individual.

This autumn I wrote about two groups I'd been following for five months. Same roles, similar age and stage of life. Same leadership programme, same trainer, same assignments. Yet one group greatly outperformed the other in critical thinking, assertiveness and ownership. The difference? Their constellation. The agreements and rituals they'd built as a group. Wild.

In a team, we look at four things. How does the team deal with workload, pressure, celebration and connection?

As always we kick it off at Leadership and how it engages. Leaders set the emotional weather. And everything goes either up or downhill from there. The biggest constraint most teams we measure get stuck on is Low Candor. The lack of expression and radical honest conversation. Now if you're a leader take this one; Most of that is decided by you and the way you bring yourself in. or not. Vulnerability is the key word here. Within context that is. You don't have to share every part of your dirty laundry, just the ones that matter to the team context. Which brings me to the question I ask every leader I work with: what version of you is your team having to absorb?

Communication: methods and language. How does your team speak? Can someone say "I'm at capacity" without it sounding like "I'm failing"? Furthermore, how does the team address each other? We tend to look out for harmony, yet it's usually the lack off friction that causes the most stress. People carry things without feeling like they can truly share. Potentially being the cause for disruption in that seemingly harmonious environment. Ahum.. To me, harmony equals balance - an equilibrium. Meaning it needs both friction and shine. Removing one side, disrupts the other side too.

Then there's also Rituals and beliefs. For the teams that have worked with us in the last years. They know we're a big fan of The Corporate Tribe by Jitske Kramer and Danielle Braun. Rituals and beliefs are the ways a team has set up their culture. How they move through success and through failure. What they find normal and what the group finds weird. A 2026 study of 63 teams found that when teams managed conflict and emotions together, as a team, the path from conflict to exhaustion weakened. In practice this can be tiny. One leadership team I worked with started every meeting by breathing together for three minutes. Pfff, really Hylke? Yes, really. They reported feeling less pressure and having clearer meetings afterwards. And it works both ways: closing rituals matter as much as opening ones. Give the end of a project, a role or a hard week the same energy you gave its start.

The unpopular one: what your team rewards and punishes. Think about the last time someone in your team got praised. Was the praising actually for something that fits within the desired culture? or something that mostly just pushed towards the result.

"Wow, you still managed to get it done today at 23:00, now that's commitment!" Sounds harmless. It isn't. A 2026 study found that working in a climate that expects and encourages overwork was linked to employees finding it harder to mentally switch off after work, partly through something the researchers call "work-recovery guilt".

Read that again. Guilt. About recovering.

That's what we teach people when we applaud the over-stretch. We reward the exact thing that drains the team, and we punish the person who logs off on time. Not directly, but indirectly. Because we’re all wired to seek recognition in some form or way.

Mirror questions

• What did the last praise in your team actually reward?

• Who gets celebrated: the person who recovered, or the person who over-stretched?

• How does your team close things: projects, weeks, roles?

3. Self-facilitation: what do you do when nobody's watching?

And then there's you.

I'll be straight with you: this part is your responsibility. A company can build the space and a team can set the norms, but nobody can take responsibility for you. Once you've become capable of taking care of yourself, you owe it to yourself to follow through. Even when it creates friction. Especially then.

Notice that it's the last layer though, not the first. Asking people to self-regulate inside a system that keeps them in overdrive is like asking someone to swim harder while you keep flooding the pool. That's why we start with the system, and why the benefits from section 1 so often don't land on their own.

Three things carry most of the weight here.

Sleep. If I could pick one, it'd be this one. Not just because i absolutely love my bed, temperature regulated room and cloud pillows but also because A 10-year study of nearly 2,900 workers looked at which health behaviours protected people from the health costs of work stress. Sleep quality came out as the strongest buffer. And for most people we speak to it comes as a surprise that it's not the amount of hours we sleep that matters most. It's how consistently we do it. We set an alarm for when we wake up. Do you set one for when you go to sleep?

On to Movement. Movement matters, just probably not the way you've been told. In that same study, exercise was linked to better health overall, but it didn't buffer stress the way sleep did. We see movement as an opportunity to shift gears and build healthy strain. If you ask my health-guru friends, you're as old as your spine is healthy.

Ahh, and then there's one of my favourites; Emotional regulation. I believe this is directly linked to emotional intelligence and it's something you can train. See it as a practice. It starts with self awareness, understanding when your body and mind react to an outside influence. Followed by awareness to how it reacts to that very thing. Now, some people (desperately) also want to know why it reacts that way. And although it's a great hobby to dive into that (and i highly recommend), you don't always have to. Awareness and choice are key here.

If you're curious to learn more about this specifically, i highly recommend you listen to a free podcast episode i recorded with good friend and expert facilitator Oscar Alonso Delgado - Listen here.

Remember "nobody's watching"? Turns out it matters a lot what you do when nobody's looking. Because that version of you is the one who walks into the team the next morning.

Mirror questions

• When is your alarm for going to sleep?

• How do you track self awareness? and what choices do you make?

• What's one way you down regulate that doesn't involve a screen?

Small effort, big effect

This year's Week Zonder Werkstress has a theme I genuinely love: Kleine moeite, groot effect. Small effort, big effect. Or as i mention a lot during sessions; ''if you're going to be at work anyway.. you might as well''

So if you're open to suggestions, here's mine for these two weeks. Don't book another workshop. Pick one small change per layer:

• System: one structure that makes room for recovery. A five-minute buffer between meetings, for example. Or that 3 minute breathing moment.

• Constellation: one new ritual, or one thing you stop rewarding as a team.

• Self: two alarms. Add the one that structures your sleep.

Stress isn't the problem. It never was. Missing recovery is. And recovery gets built the same way it got broken: daily, in the structure, one layer at a time.

Curious what this looks like in your organisation? I'm happy to show you. Invite me for lunch :)

Hylke