Two thirds of employees in Germany regularly suffer from at least one physical or psychological complaint caused by their work: back pain, persistent exhaustion, headaches. Almost one in five people considers their own burnout risk to be high. These figures do not describe an exceptional situation. They describe the normal state of affairs in German offices and workplaces in 2025.
These figures come from the „Arbeiten 2025“ („Working 2025“) study by Pronova BKK, for which 1,230 employees in Germany were surveyed on a representative basis in September and October 2025. What is striking is less the numbers themselves. The real question is what people do before they reach this point. Or more precisely: what they don’t do.
The Problem with „I’ll Manage“
The data reveals a pattern that runs through almost every industry and age group: people wait. They wait for things to get better, for the next restructuring to be less demanding, for the quarter to calm down. They push through and call it strength. Yet that pushing through is often precisely what drives them into the kind of exhaustion they can no longer escape on their own.
The Pronova BKK study shows that the unequal distribution of workload in particular is experienced as more burdensome today than it was five years ago. And people under 30 feel additional pressure from constant availability. What used to be the exception has become the baseline for many. Those who live in that baseline long enough eventually stop noticing that it is wearing them down.
Burnout Is Witnessed — and Still Not Prevented
According to the study, two thirds of respondents have already witnessed burnout cases in their immediate environment or have been affected themselves. That is an extraordinarily high number. It means: almost everyone knows someone it has happened to. And yet for many people, the film keeps rolling. With themselves in the lead role, following the same script.
Why? Because burnout rarely announces itself like a cold. It arrives as a drop in performance, as irritability, as the feeling that work which used to feel meaningful suddenly rings hollow. The point at which people seek support is rarely the beginning of the problem. It is the end of a long phase of ignoring the signs. Many describe it this way: „I was functioning, but I was no longer living.“
Exhaustion and Under-Challenge: Two Sides of the Same Coin
What the study also shows — and what receives too little attention in public debate — is that under-challenge also makes people ill. Boreout, burning out through boredom and a lack of meaning, is increasingly prevalent according to Pronova BKK 2025, particularly among younger employees. This is the other extreme, which ultimately arrives at the same destination: a working life that feels as though you spend energy every morning without ever recharging.
Whether the issue is overload or emptiness, both often conceal the same unresolved question: what do I actually want from my work? What gets me out of bed in the morning? Those who do not answer this question answer it regardless — through what they fill their time with. And that is rarely a conscious decision, but rather the result of years without direction.
What Resilience Actually Means in This Context
Resilience is often sold as a personal quality — something you either have or develop in order to absorb pressure. That falls short. Resilience is not a shield against poor working conditions. Someone working within a system that is structurally overwhelming will not become healthier through breathing exercises alone.
What resilience can genuinely achieve in a professional context is this: it gives you clarity about what you can influence and what you cannot. It helps you make decisions — including uncomfortable ones. It makes the difference between someone who is carried along by circumstances and someone who knows where they stand and where they want to go. The self-competence coaching starts exactly here: with the question of what you want to change and how.
When Exhaustion Forces a Decision
Sometimes it takes a crisis to become honest. A mid-sized company executive in her mid-forties came to coaching after being signed off sick for three weeks. Before that, she had spent ten years working more than she had thought, delivering more than she had promised, and asking fewer questions than she needed to. The sick leave was the first moment she had stopped functioning. And the first moment she began to understand what she actually wanted from her professional life.
She did not need motivational exercises. She needed orientation. The coaching helped her sort through the questions she had suppressed for years: what role do I still want to fulfil? Which ones no longer? What is negotiable, and what is costing me too much? Today she leads a smaller team — with less prestige on paper and more energy in everyday life. That was her decision, made through a process she steered herself.
What the Numbers Don’t Say
Studies like „Working 2025“ matter because they show that individual exhaustion is a collective phenomenon. They make visible what many experience as personal failure but which takes place within a structural context. At the same time, a study cannot do what coaching can: focus on the one person who is standing at a concrete crossroads right now and does not know which direction is the right one.
If you currently feel like you are dragging yourself along rather than moving forward — in your work, in your role, in your daily life — that is not a sign of weakness. It is a signal worth following up on. Sometimes a single conversation is enough to understand what has shifted and what should come next. For leaders who want to use their own exhaustion as an opportunity to rethink their leadership role, there is the leadership coaching. Those who sense that their entire professional direction is up for review will find the right framework in the career change coaching.
If you want to find out where you stand right now and what your next step could be, book a free initial conversation: 30 minutes · Online · No sales pitch. Click here to book your appointment.
Source: Pronova BKK, „Arbeiten 2025. Ergebnisse einer Befragung von Arbeitnehmer*innen“ („Working 2025. Results of a Survey of Employees“), October 2025. Online survey, n = 1,230 employees in Germany.
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