People risk is nowadays recognised as a very wide-ranging concept, in its many dimensions. Gone are the days when this focused solely on headcount (we haven’t got enough people! or, we can’t afford the people we have!) and their capability (we haven’t got the right skill sets!). Wellbeing is now recognised as a key part of people risk, and an important aspect of this is burnout. Burnout is a state of complete mental and physical exhaustion, where we become so overwhelmed that our performance at work can suffer, while physical and mental health issues can also affect us outside of the work environment. If not addressed and adequately managed, it can easily become a feature of high perfoming businesses. Jane Hunter discusses how to maintain high standards and high levels of performance without suffering burnout.