Refilled Seats and Forgotten Lives

Editor’s Note: In recognition of National PTSD Awareness Day (June 27th), this first-person essay from our Founder & CEO, Charmaine Green-Forde, offers a rare, unfiltered look at the toll toxic workplace culture can take—especially from behind the scenes in HR.

 

Is the danger of toxic workplace culture overblown—or are we just used to it?

I’m often asked what my wildest HR workplace stories are. And my answer over the years has always been the same: “Maybe one day I’ll write a book.”

But the truth is, I’m not sure I could. Some of those experiences are ones I’m still not ready to relive.

We like to paint HR professionals as robotic. Company people. Silent enforcers. I’ve heard it all, and I get it. HR has a reputation, some of it earned. We’ve historically done a poor job explaining what we do, and an even worse job pushing back on the narratives that made us easy villains.

But here’s the reality I know, the realities that have never left me:

I’ve witnessed the beast that is corporate culture. The kind that circles the vulnerable like a vulture, slowly wearing people down until they break.
I’ve seen people receive irreversible diagnoses after years of enduring chronic stress in environments that rewarded silence and punished boundaries.
I’ve been made aware of mental health unraveling after months—sometimes years—of unchecked workplace bullying, gaslighting, and isolation dressed up as “feedback.”

And yes, where people died as a result.
Let that sit with you.
Because the first time I had to process an employee’s death, I was barely in my 20s.

Did the deaths stump you?
I’m not surprised.
We’re at a place, and have been for some time, where only the final act gets attention. Not the buildup. Not the exhaustion. Not the quiet unraveling that happens in plain sight. We ignore the signs until it’s too late. We perform grief in public while rewarding grind in private.

We wait until someone is gone to ask how things got so bad…

• There was the employee who jumped to their death from the interior balcony of the building—after months of bullying and psychological abuse from their manager.

• The employee who had a heart attack at their desk. They were 42. No one noticed until the next morning.

• And the person who died by suicide at home, after sharing with loved ones the toll that workplace stress and targeted mistreatment had taken.

These aren’t stories I heard about.
They’re stories I was present for.
Stories I had to help navigate—quietly, internally, while the world kept spinning.

And none of these stories are rare.
They’re happening in a world where over half of employees in North America report experiencing daily stress.²

And I wasn’t just navigating internal protocols.
I was speaking to grieving families. Trying to find words when there are none. Coordinating logistics, making sure the company’s “response” was appropriate, while knowing nothing about it could ever feel right.

Oh—and that employee who had the heart attack?
By the following week, their office had been cleared out and prepped for someone else.
Like they were never there. Like they hadn’t died on the job.

And what still gets me is, they were someone I saw and spoke with often.
We’d had conversations about the hours they were clocking. About how unhealthy it all was.
The response was always the same: “I need this to get ahead. I need this to support my family.”

And all I can think is… their family lost them.
Their spouse and kids were forever changed.
Meanwhile, the company quickly moved on.

The other common thread in all these stories?
No mental health support was offered to me—because HR is expected to do the lifting, not get lifted.

That’s what I want people to understand.

You can give everything—your time, your health, your joy, and still be replaced without hesitation.

That’s not loyalty. That’s a system working exactly as it was designed.

Workplace culture will ask you to pour yourself out and then quietly refill the seat when you’re gone, no matter how you got “gone.”

And this problem? It’s a global one.
In Japan, they have a word for it: karōshi—death by overwork. In the U.K., presenteeism is so common that 87%¹ of organizations have witnessed employees working while unwell. In the U.S., 81%² of remote workers admit to checking email outside work hours—including weekends and vacations. Across the world, different cultures excuse different forms of harm but the consequences are strikingly similar.

According to the World Health Organization, depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion per year in lost productivity and result in 12 billion workdays lost annually. Gallup’s 2023 report found that 44% of employees globally said they felt stressed “a lot” the previous day—a record high. In East Asia and North America, that number jumps to 52%. A 2024 SHRM report found that 44% of U.S. workers say they feel burned out, 45% feel emotionally drained, and 51% say they feel “used up” by the end of the day. And a 2025 CUNY study confirmed that presenteeism—being physically present but mentally and emotionally depleted—costs companies significantly more than absenteeism, with burnout-related productivity losses totaling millions per year per employer³.

So employees: stop sacrificing your body, your joy, your relationships, or your peace for a workplace that was never built to repay that kind of debt.
And organizations, let’s stop pretending this is sustainable.

If you’re not willing to change, to hold those responsible accountable, regardless of how much you “like them” or how senior they are—then ask yourself this: In a capitalist society, can you really afford to ignore the numbers?

 

Sources

¹ CIPD. Health and Wellbeing at Work Survey. 2023.
² Gallup & Future Forum. Employee Engagement & Remote Work Trends. 2024–2025.
³ CUNY School of Public Health. 2025 Workplace Burnout Impact Study.