Employee burnout in Türkiye: what the data says, and where exercise comes in
34% annual turnover, fatigue as the #1 reported emotion, and exercise's evidenced link to cognitive performance. An evidence-led look at corporate wellbeing.
The numbers on Türkiye's working life are painting an increasingly sharp picture, and it's no longer just an HR topic. It's a board topic.
The data first
Let's start with published data, not feelings:
- Annual employee turnover in Türkiye rose from 24.45% in 2018 to around 34% by Q1 2024; 77% of leavers say they left for better pay and conditions (Frontiers in Psychology, 2025).
- The same study found 47% of employees on the verge of "quiet quitting", with 24% already disengaged.
- Across 100 companies and 150,000 employees, Meditopia measured Türkiye's overall wellbeing score at 54.8 out of 100, with fatigue as the single most-reported emotion (Meditopia Employee Wellbeing Report).
- According to Great Place to Work Türkiye's 2025 analysis, employees' number-one expectation from employers is now psychological wellbeing (GPTW Türkiye).
In short: a tired, disengaging workforce that expects wellbeing. Pay rises alone aren't solving it, even where the 77% go, the same cycle continues.
Why exercise is a performance tool, not an HR gesture
Exercise science has clear things to say about this picture:
- Movement is linked to cognitive performance. A study of endurance athletes showed positive associations between exercise-related biomarkers (BDNF and irisin) and cognitive skills (Belviranlı, Okudan, Kabak, Erdoğan et al., The Physician and Sportsmedicine, 2016). This is mechanism-level evidence from athletes, it doesn't transfer one-to-one to the office; but it shows what movement means for the brain.
- Exercise can be prescribed for desk-based workers. Office-adapted, equipment-free protocols exist, one of the Turkish references in this space is the Office Exercise Handbook published by the Turkish General Staff Press (2017).
- An unmeasured program is not a program. With validated instruments (e.g. the WHO-5 wellbeing index, the UWES engagement scale) and wearable data, a program's before/after can be reported in numbers.
A practical framework for organizations
Protocol, not slogans; measurement, not a motivational talk.
An evidence-based corporate program is built in three steps: baseline measurement (surveys + voluntary wearable data), intervention (movement, recovery, sleep and energy-management protocols), and re-measurement. The difference is reported in numbers; individual data is never shared, the employer only sees anonymized, aggregated trends.
The cost of waiting grows every quarter the burnout data worsens. Starting with measurement is as close as a single discovery call.