In fast-paced tech environments, HR often ends up holding what the business generates but struggles to resolve: stretched teams, uneven performance, quiet disengagement. It isn’t always clearly visible, maybe even doesn’t show up in metrics. But it shows up in attrition, in underperformance, in the quiet drift of motivation and energy.
Sustainable Performance is a way to meet this drift head-on: with a practical approach to how work gets done. It aligns short-term delivery with long-term capacity, and equips managers to lead in ways that don’t rely on pressure alone. Applied systematically, it becomes a leadership framework—one that strengthens culture, reduces reliance on escalation, and makes performance more stable, predictable, and sustainable long-term.
Pressure Can’t Be Avoided—But It Can Be Handled Differently
Deadlines, targets, and shifting priorities are part of everyday business. What makes the difference is not the pressure itself, but how people experience it and respond to it. Every demand has two layers: the external context and the internal experience. While the first may be unavoidable, the second can be influenced. With the right support, people can build the skills to stay clear and steady under pressure. But that support needs to arrive early—before the strain becomes visible, and before performance begins to erode.
The Mental Health Crisis in Tech
There are moments when performance issues become impossible to ignore: turnover rises, absenteeism grows, and productivity slows. Emotional exhaustion surfaces across technical teams, HR, and leadership. The tech industry is already seeing these signals: over 25% of its workforce reported symptoms of burnout last year alone, 62% feel emotionally drained by the demands of their jobs, and the turnover rate reaches 13%. HR professionals are just as affected, with mental health concerns occurring three times more often than in the general population.
These are not early signs, these are symptoms of a system under continuous strain. Interventions addressing these symptoms are often ineffective. Even well-meaning prevention programs don’t always help. Some, like resilience training, may make things worse by encouraging people to push through without solving the underlying issue.
The McKinsey Health Institute points to a different path: organisations that commit to healthy, sustainable performance see better outcomes—not only for people, but for ROI. But to act effectively, organisations need to detect problems much earlier—by paying attention to low-intensity signals.
The Pattern of Uneven Performance
Many teams repeat a pattern: a few consistent performers carry the load, while others fluctuate between bursts of energy and disengagement. Overload goes unnoticed. Feedback disappears. Strain gets misread as attitude. Conversations that might surface the truth either don’t happen, or come too late. The result is performance held together by individual effort, rather than shared understanding and sustainable habits.
Lead Your Team to Sustainable Performance
To move beyond reactive mode, organisations need clear ways to understand where capacity is strained, where leadership habits fall short, and where there is room to build healthier performance. This includes pressure points in culture, in how managers operate, in the maturity of team dynamics, and in the organisation’s ability to detect strain early.
From there, it’s about equipping managers with the ability to shape performance in real time, to give feedback that changes behaviour, to intervene early and effectively. Research shows that 70% of how people feel at work is shaped by their immediate manager. The implication is clear: training managers is an essential element of any performance strategy.
At the same time, teams need space and support to build performance habits themselves—handling change, asking for feedback, responding to changes with curiosity for learning.
Free Sustainable Performance tools:
Sustainable Performance Scan measures five organisational dimensions: Sustainability Culture, Managerial Skills, Team Maturity, Early Detection, and Strategic Focus (5 minutes, immediate interpretation of results to your inbox): https://sustainableorganisation.scoreapp.com/
Personal Sustainable Performance Index helps team members understand their stress responses and behavioural skills, such as asking for feedback, managing change, and responding to challenges with a learning mindset (5 minutes, immediate interpretation of results to your inbox): https://sustainableperformance.scoreapp.com/
Authors:
Dr Agnieszka Bojanowska
Dr Agnieszka Bojanowska is a psychologist with a PhD in behavioural science and a background in academic research, leadership development, and performance training. She specialises in turning psychological insight into practical tools that help people lead, work, and make decisions more effectively. She has conducted research on motivation, well-being, and performance, and has worked closely with professionals and leaders across industries to help them reach ambitious goals in demanding environments.
Paul Bijleveld
Paul Bijleveld brings two decades of experience in business and IT transformation consulting. He has led complex change projects across industries, helping organisations align their structures, systems and governance. His work focuses on making strategy executable—by equipping managers and teams with the clarity and capability to drive sustainable results. He understands the realities of high-pressure environments and designs solutions that hold up under operational demands, delivering outcomes that are both pragmatic and durable.
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