Data from leadership organisation Women Rising says 74 per cent of Australian women will consider leaving their organisation in the next 18 months.

Of the 1200 survey particpants, only eight per cent of women said they are thriving in their jobs and 84 per cent said a supportive relationship with their manager is the number one thing they need to thrive at work.

Women Rising CEO Megan Dalla-Camina said this is a “staggeringly low” number of women who don’t believe they are thriving in the workplace, but instead say they are simply functioning or at worst surviving.

“I think every leader in this country should be particularly concerned by this low number,” she said.

For Microsoft digital sales director Michelle Markham, 49, her previous job had her in “a constant cycle of burnout”.

“I had this belief that if I worked hard enough, delivered results and behaved in the ‘right’ way, then my boss would notice me and reward me for that with opportunities and promotions,” Ms Markham said.

“Having that assumption was my mistake.”

Her experience of burnout in her previous job, where she was filing work at “midnight” functioning on little to no sleep, was not sustainable, she said.

Ms Markham said she was not managing her burnout at all and was “hoping” she would “eventually end up in a hospital and get a forced week of leave”.

“I did not want to have a conversation about adjusting my KPIs and expectations, because I didn’t want to risk my job and professional opportunities,” Ms Markham said.

“I really felt I didn’t deserve my manager’s time, that he was too busy and he wouldn’t be interested in my life and my boundaries.

“I was afraid if I put a boundary up, and keep in mind I have four children under four at home, that suddenly bias would come into it and they would be saying I’m too weak and I’m not ready to progress to the next big opportunity.”

Ms Markham said it was only after participating in the Women Rising leadership program that she had the “confidence” to have these conversations, by realising her value as a professional as well as choosing to prioritise her wellbeing.

In her current role, Ms Markham has taken a new approach to “managing my manager” and avoiding burnout.

“I send an email every week to my manager that says, ‘this is the work I did this week and the impact it had; this is what I’m focused on achieving next week; and this is how you can support me’,” she said.

“In this way, and in other ways, I’m controlling the narrative a lot more and I’m getting the visibility where I want it.”

Women are severely under-represented in all key decision-making roles across almost all industries in the Australian workforce, as outlined in the 2023 discussion paper on Australia’s national strategy for gender equality.

Women comprise only 22.3 per cent of CEOs, 35.1 per cent of key management positions, 34 per cent of board members and 18 per cent of board chairs.

“We still live in a patriarchal society which means the role models we see in the workplace in positions of leadership are still largely men, that is what the data tells us,” Ms Dalla-Camina said.

“The expectations of what a successful leader looks like are still modelled on masculine norms and behaviours.

“So for women who don’t fit that model, it becomes very challenging to chart a career path because you’re constantly having to change yourself to fit into that model.”

While research shows both men and women experience burnout, it also highlights that women experience it at higher rates.

Of those surveyed, 81 per cent of women said they had experienced increased levels of stress in the workplace in the last 18 months and 78 per cent said they have experienced burnout.

“I would say we are experiencing an epidemic of burnout among professional women,” Ms Dalla-Camina said.

Burnout is reaching a point where you become disengaged and apathetic towards work that you usually care about, she said.

“We saw this number rise during the height of the pandemic, but we have seen this number continue to increase.”

Women with children often work a “double-shift” and the data shows that all women appear to still be doing the majority of the work in the home.

“In majority of cases women are the primary carer, whether that is with children or ageing parents,” Ms Dalla-Camina said.

It is the extreme “mental and physical load” of taking care of everything that puts women at a higher risk of serious burnout, she explained.