The September Squeeze: When Back to Work Means Back to Uncertainty
September often comes with the expectation of a fresh start: renewed energy, clearer priorities and a sense of momentum.
But people may be facing the very same cocktail of financial worries, job insecurity, organisational change and growing workloads as before.
Add the rapid adoption of AI and tensions around where and how we work, and September can feel less like a reset than an acceleration.
Health and Safety Executive figures show that 964,000 workers in Great Britain suffered from work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2024/25, accounting for 22.1 million lost working days.
Are people becoming less resilient – or are they simply having to cope with more?
When demands overlap
Different sources of stress can quickly accumulate: financial worries, the impact of a restructure, uncertainty around new technology and a growing workload.
Of those surveyed by the 2025 Good Work Index, 31 per cent said their work was negatively affected by their financial concerns. Yet formal financial wellbeing support remains far from universal.
Work has also become harder to contain. Emails and notifications can extend the working day, while hybrid working has created routines around childcare, caring responsibilities and everyday life that can be disrupted by new expectations about office attendance.
AI adds another kind of uncertainty, raising questions about how roles may change, which skills will remain valuable and how quickly people will be expected to adapt.
ONS research published in June 2026 found that almost half of adults aged 16–49 thought AI could put their job at risk.
And AI is itself part of a much wider period of workplace change, as new structures, systems and expectations continue to reshape working life.
Deloitte’s 2026 UK Human Capital Trends research found that 76 per cent of UK workers said too much organisational change had affected their wellbeing.
Resilience is therefore only part of the answer. The more useful question is which demands people can manage themselves, where they need support and which could be reduced by the organisation.
What can people actually control?
Employees may not be able to control how their organisation changes or what happens in the wider economy.
But they can have some control over how they respond: where they set boundaries, what they prioritise, when they ask for help and which skills they choose to develop.
Trying to gain control over every source of uncertainty can itself become exhausting. When the external environment keeps changing, more effort does not necessarily buy more control.
Instead, it helps to focus on the anchors that do not move just because everything else is shifting.
These will be different for everyone, but might include relationships, values, movement, boundaries or simply knowing what ‘enough’ looks like.
Under sustained stress, trying to solve everything at once – career, workload or wellbeing – can become another demand. It may be more useful to identify the first small step that feels achievable.
One such step might be creating time to check in with yourself. But as Matt Adamson, Career Coach at 10Eighty suggests, “Don’t turn checking in with yourself into another task you don’t have time for.
Put 10 minutes in the diary once a week and ask: What’s giving me energy? What’s draining it? What’s one small thing I can change this week? You don’t need to solve everything – you just need to take the next right step.”
What organisations can control
Employers cannot remove wider uncertainty, but they can avoid creating more of it themselves.
During a restructure, leaders may not be able to tell people what the outcome will be. But they can be clear about what is known, what remains undecided and when people will hear more.
The same applies to AI. People need more than broad messages about transformation and efficiency.
They need practical information about how their work may change, which skills will become more important, what training will be available and what the organisation is still working out.
Furthermore, as Matt Adamson outlines, “Leaders also have an important role in creating a sense of possibility, not just uncertainty.
Give people the space, permission and support to experiment with AI: to explore where it could make their work easier, what it might free them up to do more of, and how their own skills can evolve alongside it.
If AI is only talked about in terms of efficiency and transformation, it will inevitably feel like a threat rather than an opportunity people can help shape.
Change needs to come with choices about workload. If something new is added, ask what is stopping, moving or being delegated.
And if nobody is having that conversation, start it yourself. “I can take this on – what would you like me to deprioritise?” is a perfectly reasonable question.”
Supporting resilience means helping people navigate uncertainty. It should not mean asking them to become progressively better at tolerating conditions that could be improved.
September can therefore be a useful point at which to ask: what is genuinely outside our control? What can we actually influence? Where is support needed? And what could the organisation change?
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The LinkedIn Live session, The New Stress Cocktail: Money, Job Insecurity, AI and Change Fatigue, will explore why stress feels different in today’s workplace and the practical steps that can help people navigate uncertainty and change.
ZenEighty supports employee wellbeing through personalised coaching, workshops and immersive experiences covering areas including stress, resilience, work–life balance and healthy boundaries.
