Thank you to Liz Lathan, co-founder of Club Ichi, for today’s blog focused on improving the mental health of incentive travel and other event industry professionals.
The Well-Being and Psychological Safety in the Events Industry Report by Melioscope and Event Minds Matter offers an unflinching look at the mental and emotional realities faced by event professionals.
It’s no surprise that we’re in a stressful industry and hold an always-on role. What used to be a seasonal, event-driven cycle of burnout that was easily worked through with some comp days and a massage, the new pace of business no longer allows for that simple reprieve.
While the data points to chronic stress and concerning gaps in workplace psychological safety, three findings stand out as both urgent and actionable.
TL;DR: We can fix this.
Pressure, workload, and the breaking point
The survey exposes a culture of overextension. The top three reported stressors were “too much workload” (56%), “unrealistic expectations” (51%), and “poor work-life balance” (36%), all of which directly correlate with high burnout scores. Participants working more than 40 hours per week or managing heavier client-facing roles reported markedly higher emotional exhaustion.
These findings suggest that burnout in events is not simply about long hours. It stems from misaligned expectations and limited recovery space.
The data reveals that younger and less experienced event professionals reported significantly higher levels of burnout and work–life conflict than their older counterparts.
Similarly, younger professionals also had greater work–family conflict, indicating poorer balance between career and home life.
I found this interesting because of the anecdotal evidence of managers saying their Gen Z and Millennial workers are pushing back harder than ever to create work boundaries and “me time” that Gen X and Boomers never got.
I’m curious to dig more into these answers and find out if the workloads have gotten bigger or if younger workers are just jumping in and immediately seeing the unrealistic expectations (like the old adage of a frog and a boiling pot of water).
When comparing burnout by job level, the highest stress and exhaustion rates appeared among administrative professionals, managers, and directors, while owners/founders and freelancers reported lower burnout. It’s not that senior professionals don’t feel pressure (they do) but the deepest strain appears to hit younger, early-career professionals, who are still establishing boundaries and stability.
Freelancers and founders, of course, experience a different kind of stress from the business development required to keep paying the bills, but having the ability to set their own boundaries and scope with clients seems to provide more workload clarity and time freedom.
Psychological safety: a gender and hierarchy divide
Perhaps the most striking discovery is the uneven distribution of psychological safety.
Despite women composing over 80% of the industry workforce, they reported significantly lower psychological safety than men, meaning that women feel less comfortable speaking up, admitting mistakes, or raising concerns without fear of negative consequences.
The problem deepens at lower job levels. Coordinators, administrative professionals, and managers (many of whom are women) reported the lowest scores across psychological safety, belonging, and job satisfaction metrics.
Meanwhile, executives and founders rated their environments as far safer and more inclusive.
This gap underscores a systemic leadership challenge. For an industry built on hospitality and connection, the internal culture often fails to reflect those same values.
The report points out that leaders must become “architects of safety” through training that cultivates empathy, transparency, and inclusion, especially in client-driven, high-pressure contexts.
Belonging reduces burnout
Event professionals who feel a strong sense of belonging to their industry or an affiliated organization report significantly lower stress and burnout.
The report’s correlational analysis found that higher “industry membership” scores were negatively associated with stress levels, suggesting that affiliation with professional bodies such as membership organizations, social clubs, and affiliations with the Event Industry Council (EIC) can directly promote resilience and engagement.
Those who feel integrated into the profession through mentorship, networking, certifications, and shared values report higher job satisfaction and lower emotional exhaustion.
This finding reinforces the importance of building robust professional communities. Belonging does not just connect individuals, it protects them.
Turning insight into action
The data is clear: belonging protects, balance sustains, and safety empowers.
Instituting organizational belonging programs, improving workload alignment, and embedding psychological safety training at all leadership levels are no longer optional. They’re essential to the business (and humanity) of events.
As a CMP myself (having help the certification for more than 20 years), I think that there are opportunities within our industry to truly create an impact for the next generation of event professionals. Here are a few ideas that we could consider:
- Launch leadership psychological safety training
Develop an industry-wide program to train managers, directors, and executives in empathy-based leadership, courageous communication, and failure-positive cultures. Equip leaders to become “architects of safety” who model openness and inclusion at every event and within every team. Ideally, this would be a mandated part of industry certifications, but at the very least, developing an elective course for leaders will help workplaces attract the best and brightest team members who can feel secure in the knowledge that their place of employment cares about their wellbeing. - Embed wellbeing standards in accreditation
Expand EIC’s Sustainable Event Standards or professional certification frameworks to include measurable wellbeing benchmarks, from workload management policies to behavioral indicators of psychological safety and healthy team communication. In my opinion, sustainability doesn’t just mean keeping our planet blue and green, it means keeping our people from being black and blue. - Create a peer-led “belonging network”
Establish a structured mentorship and peer-support initiative that pairs early-career professionals with trained industry mentors. The aim: reduce burnout risk through social integration and belonging, which the report identified as a key protective factor against stress and emotional exhaustion. Our industry associations are primed to run programs like this and many of them do, but more emphasis should be placed on recruiting participants as mentors and mentees. - Recalibrate workload and expectation culture
Convene senior leaders to adopt evidence-based norms around client expectation management and workload redistribution. Introduce “event readiness” review checklists that include recovery schedules, staffing ratios, and psychological risk assessments before major events. - Publish an annual “event well index”
Implement an annual survey to measure progress across the three pillars: connection, leadership, and safety, making results public to encourage accountability and continuous improvement across industry organizations.
My organization, Club Ichi, is a social club for people in events. We embed neurovitality throughout our programs in-person and online and double-down on belonging.
Through our Event Minds Matter micro-community, we have uncovered a burning desire among our members to focus on conversations and resources to support the mental health and wellbeing of the people in our industry.
We are not an educational institute or a research foundation, and we do not provide industry certifications or draft global standards. We look to partner with and support associations and accrediting organizations who do those things in order to help our members find the professional growth they seek. Whether we partner on any of these initiatives, or the EIC takes them and runs with them, we know that they are needed.
The EIC leads the way in setting global best practices. Now it can drive change by championing a new standard of care.
The success of the event industry isn’t measured only by attendance or revenue; it’s by how well we safeguard the people who make it all happen.
We are all in this together.
We are one.
We are Ichi.
