The Mannheim work psychologist Sabine Sonnentag studies how people recover from work. Research links Abschalten, switching off mentally after work, with less tiredness the next morning. In 2019 Sonnentag and colleagues published a study of 151 employees in the Journal of Management. It found that people also need to reconnect mentally with their work at the start of the day. This tuning in, Einstimmen, goes together with activating work-related goals.
studies
Trigger Points
In 2023 the sociologists Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser published Triggerpunkte. Konsens und Konflikt in der Gegenwartsgesellschaft, Trigger Points: Consensus and Conflict in Contemporary Society. Their finding is that on many big questions there is a fair degree of consensus. Conflict breaks out at particular points. Mau calls them Sollbruchstellen der öffentlichen Debatte, the built-in breaking points of public debate. One example from the book: Gleichstellung ja, aber bitte keine „Gendersprache“! Equality yes, but please no gender language! The authors doubt that two clearly defined camps have formed.
Does It Upset You?
In March and April 2026 the Allensbach Institute interviewed 1,057 people in Germany. It asked: when you deal with someone whose opinions are very different from yours, does that often upset you, or is it usually no problem for you? 61 percent said it was no problem. 21 percent said it upset them. In a larger group of friends, 30 percent said they like to give their opinion, and 28 percent prefer to let others talk. 57 percent said that there are people in their family or among their friends with whom it makes no sense to talk about certain political topics, because their opinions are too far apart. The FAZ published the results on 17 April 2026.
Between Trust and Control
In summer 2021, the staffing firm Hays and the Rheingold institute surveyed 750 managers in companies in Germany with more than 100 employees. The topic was leadership when staff work from home. 61 percent said they already follow more closely when, how and how many employees work. 58 percent set more requirements and give out smaller work steps.
The study was titled Zwischen Vertrauen und Kontrolle, between trust and control. It was carried out during the pandemic.
One in Three Is Often Praised
In the 2018 Employment Survey of two federal institutes, the BIBB and the BAuA, only one employee in three reported frequent recognition and praise from superiors. About six in ten said that they often received support from their manager. The trade unions’ Good Work Index of the same year found that 32 percent of employees received little or no appreciation at work.
The Daily Scrum
Daily Scrum ist die meistgenutzte agile Technik. The daily Scrum is the most used agile technique. This was a finding of the study Status Quo Agile 2017 by Koblenz University of Applied Sciences and the project management association GPM. The daily Scrum is the team’s daily status meeting.
More than 1,000 people from over 30 countries took part in the study. Most of the responses came from business units located in Germany. The question on techniques was answered by people who work with agile methods.
Among these users, the daily status meeting was the most widely adopted practice.
Thirteen Days Away
The Reiseanalyse, the annual study of German holiday travel, counts trips of five days or more as holiday trips. In 2024 it counted 68 million of them. On average they lasted 13.0 days. That was almost as long as in 2023, and longer than in 2022, at 12.6 days, or 2019, at 12.4 days. The study also counted 94 million short trips of two to four days.
Short trips now outnumber holiday trips, but the average holiday trip still lasts about two weeks.
Once a Year With the Boss
In a survey commissioned by the Königsteiner Gruppe and published in July 2025, 1,073 employees in Germany were asked about the Mitarbeitergespräch, the formal talk with their manager. Seven in ten are invited to such a talk at least once a year. 18 percent have no such talk at all. Only 22 percent have this talk every month or every quarter.
A 2025 report by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found structured staff talks in a little over 70 percent of private firms with 50 or more employees, both in 2012 and in 2023. It describes the performance appraisal as meist jährlich, mostly annual.
Participative, at Eye Level
GLOBE is a large international study of culture and leadership. Two psychologists at German universities, Felix Brodbeck and Michael Frese, analyzed its data for Germany. With Mansour Javidan, they published a paper in 2002 titled Leadership made in Germany: Low on compassion, high on performance.
In 2004, Brodbeck described German leaders as oriented to the task, jedoch partizipativ um die besten Lösungen ringend, but struggling for the best solutions in a participative way. Their cooperation rests on die institutionell verankerte Partizipation auf Augenhöhe, participation at eye level that is anchored in institutions. In the GLOBE data, German managers express very high expectations that leaders be participative.
Unpaid Overtime
According to the Institute for Employment Research, IAB, employees in Germany worked about 1.2 billion overtime hours in 2024. More than half of them, 53.6 percent, were unpaid. The same figure appears in a parliamentary question in the Bundestag in 2025. The IAB count leaves out overtime that is later balanced through working-time accounts. Unpaid here means that the hours were neither paid nor taken back as time off.