At Tika EQ, we’ve been engaging with organisations, leaders, and communities around a concept that continues to strike a chord across sectors - Identity Load.

Through our recent workshops, consultations, and leadership sessions, this topic has opened up powerful conversations about inclusion, wellbeing, and the unseen weight that many individuals carry in workplaces and community spaces alike. For some, identity load is a new phrase. But for many, it names an experience they’ve been navigating for years - quietly, persistently, and often alone.

Defining Identity Load

Identity Load refers to the additional, often invisible, emotional and cognitive labour that people carry when they are expected to represent, explain, educate, or mediate on behalf of their identity, whether that’s their culture, gender, sexuality, faith, or lived experience, on top of their formal role. It’s the hidden work that exists outside job descriptions but within the daily reality of many employees.

It looks like:

• The unacknowledged effort of being the ‘voice of difference’ in a meeting.
• The emotional toll of translating between perspectives or holding tension in difficult conversations.
• The expectation to mentor, educate, or hold space for others while managing your own fatigue.

In Employee Resource or Action Groups (ERGs/EAGs),reconciliation initiatives, and diversity or advisory committees, this identity-based labour often shows up most clearly. People are invited to the table because of their lived experience and while their insights are valuable, the burden of constantly being the representation can be exhausting.

Why It Matters

Identity load is more than a workplace issue; it’s a leadership issue. When this additional labour goes unrecognised or unsupported, it affects wellbeing, retention, and organisational culture. It can lead to burnout, disengagement, and attrition, particularly among those who bring critical cultural and community perspectives.

In First Nations contexts, and across other communities with long histories of underrepresentation, the weight can be compounded. Individuals are asked not only to show up as professionals but to hold space for reconciliation, to correct misunderstanding, or to build bridges that others continue to walk across.

The result? Many step back from the very initiatives they once championed, not from a lack of commitment, but from exhaustion.

How Identity Load Shows Up in Organisations

Even in progressive and well-intentioned workplaces, identity load can become embedded in systems and expectations.

It can appear when:

• The same people are consistently asked to “consult” or “represent” their community voice.
• Diversity and inclusion efforts rely on a handful of individuals to carry emotional and educational labour.
• Recognition is symbolic (through acknowledgment or visibility) but not structural (through time, pay, or workload adjustments).
• Lived experience is valued rhetorically, but not embedded as strategic expertise in decision-making processes.

When inclusion depends on the unpaid, unseen work of a few, it reinforces inequity rather than dismantling it.

What Leaders and Organisations Can Do

Building equity into systems means shifting the weight of responsibility, from the shoulders of individuals to the structure of the organisation itself.

At Tika EQ, we encourage leaders to start with four key actions:

1. Recognise the Load
Name it. Create language for it. Encourage open dialogue about identity load in performance and wellbeing conversations. Recognition helps make the invisible visible.

2. Resource It
Provide tangible support. Allocate time, funding, and recognition for the additional cultural, emotional, or relational work people do. This might mean compensating ERG leads, adjusting workloads, or building rest and reflection into project timelines.

3. Share It
Equity is a collective responsibility. Build capacity across the organisation so that inclusion and reconciliation efforts aren’t held solely by those most impacted. Offer allyship training, create co-champions, and ensure leaders model shared accountability.

4. Value Lived Experience Strategically
Lived experience is not symbolic, it’s strategic. Those with direct community connection bring insight into risk, reputation, and innovation that organisations cannot afford to overlook. Embed this expertise within governance, planning, and decision-making processes.

Beyond Inclusion: Towards Structural Care

This work isn’t about special treatment; it’s about fair systems and sustainable engagement. When we talk about identity load, we’re really talking about care; for people, for relationships, and for the systems that shape how we work. True inclusion means designing workplaces where representation doesn’t come with exhaustion, and where those who speak from lived experience are supported, not depleted, by the opportunity.

Where the Real Work Begins

If we want sustainable leadership, meaningful reconciliation, and cultures of belonging, we need to start with load, legacy, and listening.

• Load - recognising and redistributing the hidden work.
• Legacy - understanding the histories that shape today’s workplace experiences.
• Listening - creating space for truth, reflection, and shared responsibility.

At Tika EQ, we believe that acknowledging identity load isn’t just an act of empathy, it’s an act of equity. By making the hidden work visible, we begin to build systems where every contribution is valued, supported, and sustained.