Read.Watch.Listen. Stress and Burnout
- SE3 Committee
- 11 minutes ago
- 3 min read
February 2026 Issue
A monthly forum to share diversity, equity, and inclusion resources.
Welcome to the next installment of Read.Watch.Listen. Last month, we discussed how engagement with the structural engineering industry shapes careers and how critical it is to seek and maintain that engagement within your organization. We saw that workers reporting high levels of engagement work more efficiently and are more likely to stay at their firms. So why is employee engagement and retention such a frequent concern for employers? What causes a lack of engagement, lowered productivity and worsened mental health inside and outside of the workplace? What happens when the job catches up?
This month on Read.Watch.Listen, we explore the impacts of stress and burnout on employees in the engineering industry. We all know that structural engineering is a high-stress, high-stakes career, with the public welfare resting in our hands each day. The added stressors of troublesome clients, budget pressures, and schedule intensity all combine to make this industry ripe for creating burnout in engineers who are ill-prepared to manage that stress. It is critical for employees to have resources to learn about stress management options, and for employers to provide supportive environments that allow employees to exercise those options and prevent burnout before it happens. When the entire team works together to ensure adequate support and resources for all its members, everyone benefits. In this issue, there are resources that cover warning signs, organizational tips, and management strategies that address workplace stress and burnout and keep everyone at their best.
Image by wayhomestudio via Freepik
How to Manage Stress for STEM Career Success - Engineers Rising LLC
This blog post from Engineers Rising summarizes a conversation between Stephanie Slocum and Lennis Perez, a chemical and wellness engineer, about managing stress. One of the myths about stress that Lennis wants to dispel is that you need to have a lot of time for stress management. Instead, consistent daily practice builds your stress management “muscles” more effectively. She recommends starting with these six things when trying to manage stress in your life: fuel for your body, sleep, movement, hydration, therapy, and environment. Stress management tools and other quick tips are also provided. If you have the time, the full interview is available in the blog post, too!
Published 2021; Estimated Read Time - 10 minutes
An Engineer's Guide to Preventing Burnout - Jacquelyn MacCoon, TEDxUofT
In this recent TedX talk, businesswoman and engineer Jacquelyn MacCoon addresses common sources of stress and burnout in engineering careers and uses clever strategies to apply engineering design principles to resolve them. Using the concepts of design load, brittle versus ductile failures, and materials science, she draws parallels between engineers and the structures they design- both need to be carefully considered and have specific processes and controls put in place to ensure long-term safety and efficacy of the system. Where a beam should yield and provide signs of distress before failing, engineers and their managers must be able to recognize symptoms of poorly managed stress and address them before they build to levels of catastrophic failure. Ms. MacCoon provides valuable insight into recognizing these issues and resources for successfully averting failures with tools familiar to engineers.
Originally aired December 2025; 00:15:32
The Unspoken Pandemic: Burnout in Engineers is Everywhere – The Happy Engineer Podcast
On this episode of The Happy Engineer, host Zach White explores the topic of burnout in engineering. He shares his first experience with burnout five years into his career, along with insights he has gathered from other engineers over the years. Zach also offers a quick self-assessment to help listeners gauge where they fall on the road to burnout, emphasizing that burnout often sneaks up on you, making it essential to understand what it is and how it shows up.
Originally published August 2023; 00:18:37
This article was originally published in the NCSEA's Structural Connection newsletter.
Read.Watch.Listen is a monthly forum hosted by the NCSEA SE3 Committee to share and promote conversations on diversity, equity and inclusion within the structural engineering profession. Each month, we will curate a series of articles, audio-visual and digital media to facilitate self-education in matters that affect our professional practice as structural engineers. Whether you choose to read, watch, or listen (or all three!), we hope you will join us in this important conversation. Missed the previous issue? Check out the NCSEA SE3 Committee News and Publication page.
Share your thoughts and/or recommended resources for the next issue at ncsea@ncsea.com.