Hello 👋 get a brew on because these are the top emerging risks between December 1, and December 15, 2025…
Review our report’s terminology here ↗
Our main risk this fortnight is…
1. Societal: HR Burnout Identified as Top Business Risk for 2026
Nearly half (46%) of HR professionals identify burnout as the biggest organisational risk heading into 2026, according to HiBob’s global survey.
63% of HR professionals describe their role as the company’s “crisis hotline,” with 42% citing managing employee well-being as the most emotionally demanding responsibility.
One-third of HR professionals are considering quitting due to burnout, while 59% report higher emotional strain than a year ago.
58% of HR leaders expect to work with smaller teams in 2026, despite facing intensified pressures from AI transformation, employment law changes, and economic uncertainty.
Business psychologist Dannielle Haig warns that “chronic empathic load” causes cognitive fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and compassion fatigue, leading to declining culture, performance, and psychological safety.
Sources
HR labels burnout as biggest business risk for 2026 | People Management | November 2025
HR professionals identify burnout as top business risk | Guardian Nigeria | 3 December 2025
HR teams feel the strain as expectations rise, survey finds | HR Review | November 2025
The 2025 NAMI Workplace Mental Health Poll | NAMI | February 2025
The State of Workplace Burnout in 2025 Research Report | The Interview Guys | October 2025
You should be concerned if…
You are a CEO or executive responsible for organisational strategy. HR burnout isn’t an HR problem—it’s a leadership blind spot with direct implications for retention, performance, and culture. When the function responsible for detecting and addressing workforce risks is itself compromised, warning signs get missed and small problems become systemic failures.
Your organisation is undergoing rapid growth, transformation, or AI adoption. Change management, restructuring, and technology integration put disproportionate strain on HR teams. If you’re pushing through transformation without assessing the wellbeing of the people managing that transformation, you’re building on unstable foundations.
You’ve experienced high turnover, redundancies, or difficult people decisions recently. Your HR team has absorbed the emotional weight of those decisions. They’ve had the hard conversations so you didn’t have to. The cumulative toll of sustained empathic load requires deliberate recovery time and support.
You operate with a lean HR function. With 58% of HR leaders expecting smaller teams in 2026, the pressure-to-resource ratio is worsening. One in ten HR professionals already works in a team of three or fewer while managing others and delivering strategic outcomes. This is structurally unsustainable.
These items are generic assumptions. We recommend considering your own unique risk landscape against your critical dependencies. If you don’t know what they are, get in touch.
Preventative actions
Make HR Wellbeing a Leadership Priority
Implement regular check-ins between executives and HR leaders that focus specifically on team wellbeing, not just workload. If financial health is reviewed monthly, workforce resilience deserves the same attention.
Rotate High-Stress Responsibilities
Build operational resilience into the HR function by rotating staff through emotionally demanding work. The people handling redundancies this quarter shouldn’t be the same people handling them next quarter.
Set Realistic Workload Expectations
If your HR team is running lean, something has to give. Either headcount increases, scope decreases, or burnout follows. These are the options—acknowledge them explicitly rather than expecting teams to absorb unlimited demand.
Provide Professional Mental Health Support
Ensure access to counselling services, employee assistance programmes, and external mental health resources for HR teams. This isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s operational infrastructure for a function dealing with constant emotional strain.
Model Boundaries at Leadership Level
If executives aren’t taking time off, setting boundaries, or acknowledging their own limitations, neither will anyone else. Leadership behaviour sets cultural expectations around sustainable working practices.
Build Early Warning Indicators
Track metrics that indicate HR team strain: turnover within HR, sick leave patterns, response times, and engagement scores. By the time burnout is visible, it’s often too late for simple interventions.
2. Technology & Geopolitical: India’s SIM-Binding Mandate Sparks Consumer and Business Concerns
India’s Department of Telecommunications has mandated that messaging apps including WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal must implement continuous SIM binding within 90 days, meaning accounts will only function when the registered SIM is physically present and active in the device
A LocalCircles survey of 115,000 consumers found that one in two believes SIM binding will cause disruption and inconvenience, with seven in ten international travellers expressing concerns about overseas usage
Web and desktop versions of messaging apps will be required to automatically log users out every six hours, requiring re-authentication through QR code pairing
The government justifies the mandate by citing cyber fraud losses exceeding ₹22,800 crore (approximately $2.7 billion USD) in 2024, arguing that continuous SIM linkage will restore traceability to accounts used in fraud schemes
Industry groups including the Broadband India Forum (representing Meta and Google) have raised concerns about overreach, consumer impact, and privacy implications, urging the government to pause implementation timelines
Sources
India Orders Messaging Apps to Work Only With Active SIM Cards | The Hacker News | December 2025
India’s new SIM-binding rule for WhatsApp and other apps explained | Onmanorama | 2 December 2025
Half of Indians fear SIM binding may disrupt messaging apps | Communications Today | 9 December 2025
You should be concerned if…
You have employees, clients, or operations in India. This directly affects business communications for any organisation with an Indian presence. Multi-device workflows, desktop messaging, and persistent sessions will be disrupted once the 90-day compliance deadline passes. Plan for communication pattern changes and potential productivity impacts.
You operate in the technology, communications, or digital services sector. India’s approach could influence regulatory thinking in other markets. With 500+ million WhatsApp users in India alone, the implementation and outcomes of this mandate will be closely watched by governments worldwide considering similar measures.
Your business relies on international travellers or remote workers. Anyone visiting India who switches to a local SIM will lose access to their primary messaging accounts. This creates operational complexity for sales teams, executives, and mobile workers who rely on messaging apps for real-time business communication.
You’re tracking digital identity and privacy regulations globally. India’s SIM-binding mandate represents a significant data point in the evolving tension between cybersecurity, privacy, and digital rights. The precedent set here may shape regulatory approaches in other jurisdictions.
Preventative actions
Assess Your India Communication Dependencies
Map out how SIM binding will affect your organisation’s workflows. Identify which teams, functions, or individuals rely on messaging apps for India-based operations and evaluate the impact of 6-hour logout requirements on responsiveness.
Develop Contingency Communication Channels
Consider backup channels that aren’t affected by SIM-binding requirements for time-sensitive business communications. Email, enterprise collaboration platforms, and voice calls may need to play a larger role in India communications.
Brief International Travellers
Ensure anyone travelling to India understands that using a local SIM will disrupt access to their primary messaging accounts. Provide guidance on maintaining access (keeping Indian SIM in secondary slot) or alternative communication methods.
Monitor Implementation Developments
India has given platforms 90 days to comply. Technical implementation details, potential workarounds, and any exemptions or modifications will become clearer in the coming weeks. Stay informed to refine your response.
Engage with Internal Policy Discussions
The tradeoffs between security and privacy underlying this mandate are not unique to India. Organisations that develop clear positions on digital identity, data sovereignty, and surveillance will be better prepared as similar debates emerge in other markets.
Review Vendor Communication Dependencies
If critical business processes depend on messaging platforms for India-based communication, assess whether those dependencies create unacceptable risk and explore alternatives before the mandate takes full effect.
Quick snippet stories
Cloudflare Admits ‘We Have Let the Internet Down Again’ After Second Major Outage: Cloudflare apologised for its second significant outage in three weeks after a configuration change to its Web Application Firewall triggered cascading failures affecting approximately 28% of all HTTP traffic served by the company. The December 5th incident lasted 25 minutes and knocked offline banks, Shopify, Zoom, LinkedIn, and Downdetector. Cloudflare confirmed the outage was not a cyber attack but an internal error during a security patch deployment. With Cloudflare serving roughly 20% of all websites globally, the incident highlights concentration risk in digital infrastructure and demonstrates that human error can be as disruptive as malicious intent.
Cloudflare outage on December 5, 2025 | Cloudflare Blog | 5 December 2025
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Warns Europe’s Weakness Poses Major Economic Risk to US: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that a weakening Europe represents a significant economic risk to the United States, citing slow bureaucracy, declining innovation, and political fragmentation across 27 member states. Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Dimon noted that Europe’s share of global GDP has dropped from 90% of America’s to just 65% over approximately 10-15 years. He called for a long-term US strategy to strengthen European allies, stating “a weak Europe is bad for us.” JPMorgan has announced plans to direct up to $1.5 trillion into supply chains, defence, and critical infrastructure over the next decade.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says Europe has a ‘real problem’ | Fortune | 6 December 2025
Thai Family Businesses Taking Cautious Approach to Market Disruptions: PwC’s 2025 Global Family Business Survey reveals Thai family businesses are experiencing declining sales amid a conservative approach to digital transformation. Only 22% reported double-digit sales growth, down from 30% two years prior, while 28% reported sales drops—double the 2023 figure. Only 22% have invested in digital and AI initiatives compared to 39% globally, and just 3% are experimenting with generative AI. PwC recommends building organisational agility and making decisive investments in AI and digital technologies, noting that the minority of agile firms achieving stronger growth outcomes demonstrate the competitive advantage of proactive transformation.
Financial Toll from Novelis Fires in Oswego County Adding Up to Staggering Amount: A series of three fires at Novelis’ aluminum plant in Oswego County, New York—a major incident in September, a smaller fire in October, and another significant blaze in November—has created substantial financial impacts across the automotive supply chain. The plant supplies approximately 40% of aluminum sheets used by American automakers. Ford estimates the disruption could cost up to $2 billion, with production of F-150 and F-Series trucks directly affected. Novelis is leveraging its global network and industry peers to fill supply gaps while working to restore hot mill operations. The incident highlights the fragility of concentrated manufacturing capacity and single-source supplier dependencies.
Financial toll from Novelis fires in Oswego County is adding up to a staggering amount | Syracuse.com | December 2025Anthropic CEO Warns Some AI
Companies ‘YOLOing’ with Capital Investments: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that some AI companies are taking excessive financial risks with massive data centre investments. Speaking at the DealBook Summit, Amodei described a “cone of uncertainty” where companies must commit capital one to two years in advance for data centres while future revenue remains uncertain. He cautioned that companies making commitments based on highly optimistic demand scenarios risk catastrophic outcomes if timing proves wrong. Without naming competitors, Amodei contrasted Anthropic’s conservative enterprise-focused approach—projecting $8-10 billion in 2025 revenue—with industry players pursuing aggressive scaling. For businesses evaluating AI partnerships, vendor financial stability should factor into selection decisions.
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At Fixinc, we are passionate about helping people get through disasters. That’s why our team of Advisors bring you this resource free of charge. If you need help understanding these threats and building a plan against them, the same Advisors are here to help over a 30-minute online call. Once complete, if you like what was provided, you can choose to provide a donation or subscribe to Unreasonable Ventures to support this channel.
