The Ethics of AI-Powered Burnout Detection: Balancing Worker Privacy, Organisational Productivity, and the Right to Disconnect

Workplace burnout has reached epidemic proportions globally, with the World Health Organization (WHO) formally classifying it as an occupational syndrome in 2019. Simultaneously, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered wellness monitoring tools have proliferated rapidly across organisations in both developed and developing economies, promising to detect early burnout indicators through real-time analysis of biometric data, communication patterns, and behavioural signals. These technologies represent a significant shift in how organisations approach employee wellbeing — one that carries profound implications for worker autonomy, privacy, and the human right to genuine rest. Despite their stated intentions, AI wellness monitoring tools raise critical ethical questions that remain inadequately addressed in both academic literature and organisational policy. By surveilling employee behaviour continuously, such systems risk transforming corporate wellness initiatives into instruments of covert monitoring, eroding the boundaries between work and rest, and ultimately intensifying rather than alleviating the very burnout they claim to prevent. This tension is particularly acute in contexts such as Nigeria and the broader Global South, where labour protections are less formalised and workers may be especially vulnerable to algorithmic workplace control. This paper develops a comprehensive ethical design framework — the PRISM Framework (Privacy-centred, Rights-based, Inclusive, Supportive, Mission-aligned) — for AI-powered workplace wellness tools. The framework is designed to balance organisational productivity imperatives with employees' fundamental rights to privacy, rest, and disconnection from work, in alignment with the Power of the Pause.