Burnout is a growing crisis in public safety. First responders work in high-stress environments every day with frequent exposure to traumatic events. Many agencies are understaffed, leading to long hours that disrupt sleep and personal routines – especially with the unpredictability of shift work.

Article Highlights

• Make Mental Health Support Accessible and Anonymous
• Incorporate Wellness Training into Standard Programs
• Optimize Schedules for Better Work-Life Balance
• Leverage AI to Detect Early Signs of Burnout
• Centralize Wellness Policies and Resources

In NEOGOV’s latest survey of public safety professionals, 57% of respondents cited “burnout” and “personal reasons” as the leading causes of voluntary turnover. Other research reveals that burnout makes employees 3x more likely to leave their organization. For those who don’t leave, burnout comes with inherent risks. 

Those employees are less likely to perform well at work, leading to lowered productivity and increased liability. In states of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion, it’s easier for responders to make mistakes. Burnout impairs decision-making – whether responders are in ‘fight or flight’ or emotionally numb states. Such events can lead to lawsuits and damage your agency’s reputation.

Considering the risks and prevalence of burnout, it’s no surprise that nearly 40% of agencies are prioritizing wellness and mental health initiatives in 2025. Are you ready to proactively prevent burnout at your agency?

Keep reading to discover five practical strategies for improving employee well-being, work-life balance, and retention.

1. Make Mental Health Support Accessible and Anonymous

Reducing stigma around mental health is a critical first step in preventing burnout. For many, asking for help may be perceived as weakness or failure. Even when responders do seek help, they struggle to find resources that are relevant to their unique experiences.

Many wellness programs or technologies have low adoption rates, and it’s not because your employees don’t need it. Without the confidence of anonymity, first responders may think they’re risking judgment or career consequences.

For a wellness program to succeed, it must be accessible and discreet. It must provide a variety of helpful, relevant resources that can be easily accessed anonymously. The trick is finding the right solution for your agency.

Wellness programs can be expensive. Establishing a peer support program is extensive and time consuming. That’s why agencies need ready-to-use, cost-effective solutions that provide immediate support by trained peers from other agencies who understand. Here are a few things to look for in your wellness solution:

• Anonymous peer network
• Comprehensive wellness content designed for first responders
• Self-assessments and check-ins
• Ability to upload and manage agency resources

PowerLine is a first responder wellness app that does everything above, and more. First responders get access to a comprehensive content library, PowerLine’s nationwide network of peer volunteers, and one convenient place to find existing department resources. PowerLine empowers responders to access wellbeing resources and 24/7 peer support on their own terms, whenever they need it.

2. Incorporate Wellness Training into Standard Programs

Training programs often overlook the mental well-being of staff. Building stress management into standard training can help prevent burnout before it starts. This has a two-pronged effect. 

First, employees learn how to manage stress properly, as well as recognize the warning signs of burnout in their own lives. There are many simple techniques that can help responders regulate their emotions in difficult situations, structure their lives in healthy ways, process trauma, relax outside of work, etc.

These include, but aren’t limited to, the following:

• Box breathing (4s in, 4s hold, 4s out, 4s hold, repeat)
• Grounding with the 5-4-3-2-1 technique
• Verbalizing emotions
• Mindfulness or meditation
• Journaling
• Physical activity
• Regular sleep

When you embed wellness into training, you’re not just supporting your employees – you’re building a healthier, more committed agency culture. You empower your employees to manage stress proactively, before it turns into burnout.

Secondly, you normalize well-being discussions within your department. As proactive as responders may be, burnout will still occur. When it does, they should feel comfortable seeking help (ideally with PowerLine’s anonymous well-being app). By introducing mental health as a normal part of the job, you reduce stigma and create space for future conversations.

Furthermore, scenario-based training can add a layer of preparedness. It simulates realistic, high-stress situations, allowing officers to develop emotional regulation and decision-making skills under pressure. It’s another way to build resilience and prepare responders for real-world challenges.

The right training platform makes it easy to integrate wellness topics into your programs. With PowerReady field training software, you can build stress management training into your standard programs. PowerReady comes with pre-built programs, configurable templates, quick-view dashboards, and robust reporting to make new role training easier.

3. Optimize Schedules for Better Work-Life Balance

Public safety jobs are unpredictable by nature. Almost anything can happen during emergency response, and first responders have limited control. 

Many agencies today are understaffed, making minimum staffing requirements even more difficult. This often places additional pressure on your most reliable employees, increasing their risk of burnout.

Shift work often comes with irregular hours, mandatory overtime, and last-minute changes. This adds another layer of stress to an already demanding job. When employees can’t plan their weeks in advance – like whether they’ll be able to attend a family event – it impacts their ability to rest, recover, and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Providing set schedules and improving schedule visibility can reduce the uncertainty of public safety jobs. The right scheduling tool gives employees access to their schedules months in advance for increased predictability. It also auto-sends updates to your entire organization via email or text messages. This keeps staff notified of important schedule changes in real-time.

Scheduling software like PowerTime provides the benefits above, and more. By automating scheduling tasks, it reduces errors and saves supervisors time. Employees can access their schedule from anywhere, request time off, swap shifts, and stay updated with automatic notifications. This gives first responders greater control over their schedules, so they can enjoy healthy, balanced lives.

4. Leverage AI to Detect Early Signs of Burnout

The sooner you can identify burnout, the better. Although there are tell-tale signs of burnout and chronic stress, you can’t count on supervisors (or yourself) to see the signs every time. Burnout isn’t always predictable, and traditional reporting tools often fall short by only logging incidents without surfacing underlying patterns.

Leveraging the power of AI, early intervention systems (EIS) help your agency recognize employee stressors and high-impact events before they become bigger problems. An EIS can also provide proactive interventions before employees disengage. This allows you to build a stronger, more resilient agency.

Adoption is still growing. In 2020, approximately 18% of law enforcement agencies nationwide used an EIS, including Minneapolis and New Orleans. An early assessment of these two cities’ EI technology and interventions showed a 67% and 62% decrease in citizen complaints, respectively. Proactive support for responders directly correlated with improved community outcomes.

Wellness-forward solutions like PowerVitals builds on traditional EIS with deeper insights and actionable data for supervisors. It quantifies cumulative stress data from multiple sources like CAD notes, action reports, and internal affairs cases. It uses advanced AI to process this information and auto-calculate a Pulse Score, which quantifies responder stress over time. Rather than flagging issues after the fact, PowerVitals helps you intervene early – reducing burnout, improving morale, and ultimately retaining top talent.

5. Centralize Wellness Policies and Resources

Policies and procedures are the foundation of public safety, establishing clear guidelines and protocols for every situation – including mental well-being. Policies help establish culture, so it’s important to update those relating to employee wellness and mental health.

For wellness policies and guidelines to be used, however, they need to be accessible from a centralized platform. When policies are scattered across emails, shared folders, binders, and filing cabinets, they can’t be accessed when needed most. If multiple versions of the same wellness policy exist, employees will be confused about your stance.

Unfortunately, many agencies lack a simple electronic policy lifecycle process. Instead it usually involves manual, paper processes and comes with version control issues and accreditation challenges. Policy management software like PowerPolicy can help. It automatically delivers updates to stakeholders, streamlines policy review workflows, easily collects electronic attestations, and much more.

How to Get Started

When wellness policies and self-care resources are centralized, it promotes a culture of mental health awareness. It signals that employee well-being isn’t an afterthought, but a core part of the agency’s operational framework.

With public safety burnout increasing, your agency needs to take steps to empower first responders and prevent burnout proactively. That’s where the right tools make a difference.

PowerDMS by NEOGOV is a public safety suite designed to optimize your workflows and help you accomplish more with less. In addition to Policy, we have solutions for early intervention, internal affairs, field training, shift scheduling, responder wellness, and so much more. Schedule a no-obligation consultation today to learn how PowerDMS can help your agency prevent public safety burnout.