Coaching data
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5 min read
Goals to set boundaries and turn down work have nearly doubled in less than a year, according to new coaching data.
Key findings
21%
of work-life balance goals are now about boundaries, up from 11%
72%
of goals to protect focus time, tame meetings or set a cut-off were completed
2×
burnout has doubled in eight months, from 12% to 24% of sessions
More people are learning to say no at work.
Goals to set boundaries and turn down work have nearly doubled in less than a year, according to new coaching data.
They now make up one in five (21%) of the work-life balance goals people set in Bloom coaching sessions, up from 11% at the end of 2025.
And the changes are sticking. People completed 72% of goals to protect focus time, tame their meetings or set a firm end-of-day cut-off within six months.
Meanwhile, self-care goals have fallen from a third (34%) to a quarter (25%).
“Self-care has its place, but you can’t bubble-bath your way out of a workload problem.”
Samantha Clarke
Chief Experience Officer at Bloom
How goals have shifted
Share of work-life balance goals | Oct–Dec 2025 | Jul–Aug 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
Boundaries and saying no | 11% | 21% | +10 pts |
Cutting or delegating workload | 8% | 14% | +6 pts |
Self-care and recovery | 34% | 25% | −9 pts |
Protecting focus time and controlling meetings | 13% | 14% | +1 pt |
Goals to delegate or cut workload are up by three quarters too, from 8% to 14%.
The pressure explains it. Workload is now the number one topic in Bloom coaching, up from 35% of sessions to 41%. And burnout has doubled in eight months, from 12% to 24% of sessions. Read our burnout analysis.
What sticks
The changes that stick are the ones people control themselves.
Blocking out focus time, owning their meetings and setting a home-time cut-off all land in the 72% that get done.
Saying no to another person takes more nerve. Those goals are completed 58% of the time.
That’s still more than half. But it shows where employers come in. Anyone can guard their own calendar. Turning down a senior colleague depends on whether the culture lets you.
Meetings are the pressure point
Back-to-back meetings and boundary struggles tend to go together.
51%
of sessions that mentioned back-to-back meetings or no time to focus also involved boundary struggles. For all other sessions, it was one in five (20%).
The data links the two rather than proving one causes the other. Even so, every recurring meeting you scrap hands time straight back to the whole team.
Same load, different story
Men and women bring workload to coaching in equal measure, in 38% of sessions each.
What comes with it is very different.
When workload comes up, four in ten women (42%) are also talking about boundaries. For men, it’s a quarter (25%).
More than a third of women (35%) link their workload to burnout, against one in five men (20%).
Women are also doing more about it. Boundary-setting makes up a bigger share of women’s coaching goals than men’s (4.2% against 2.8%), and both follow through at similar rates.
For employers, that’s worth noticing. If women are doing more of the work of holding boundaries, a culture where saying no is hard costs them more.
What employers can do
“With burnout doubling, employers can’t simply expect people to say no,” says Samantha. “In most workplaces that isn’t easy, and back-to-back meetings are a fact of life.”
Make workload conversations normal. Give people a regular slot to flag where work is growing and where their strengths are being wasted, so raising it never feels like complaining.
Cut back on meetings. Review recurring meetings every quarter and drop any without a clear decision or owner. Agree shared focus time across teams, so one person’s boundary isn’t another person’s clash.
Reward results, not busyness. Judge people on what they deliver, not how full their calendar looks. If leaders praise being always on, saying no feels risky.
Fix what keeps breaking. Find the broken handoffs and repeat jobs that cause stress, and test where AI could take them off people’s plates.
Want to see the goals your own people are setting? Book a demo of Bloom.
How to say no well
Bloom’s coaches say start with what matters most. Work out where your time makes the biggest difference, say yes to that first, and everything else becomes a “not now”.
A no doesn’t have to be a flat refusal. Try:
a “not now”, with a date to come back to it
a pointer to resources that will help
a handover to someone better placed
an offer to work on it together
And if work keeps taking longer than it should, ask whether it plays to your strengths. Raise it with your manager while there are still options.
How we did it
Goals: Bloom analysed 1,782 work-life balance actions (around 7.5% of all actions) set in coaching over the past year by 768 people at 46 organisations; 43% of those with a known location were UK-based. Trends compare October to December 2025 (310 actions) with July to August 2026 (364 actions). The rise in boundary and saying-no goals is statistically significant (p=.0025) and holds when controlling for organisation; the rise in delegation and workload goals is also significant (p=.041). Completion rates cover actions set by 28 March 2026, giving each at least six months (72% vs 58%, p=.048).
Gender: 1,506 coaching sessions from 1,211 people (618 women, 593 men) where gender could be reliably identified, controlling for organisation and month. The difference in boundary-setting actions is significant (p=.019).
Session themes and meetings: 1,794 anonymised, AI-generated session summaries from 1,247 people at 34 organisations in 44 countries, September 2025 to July 2026. The meetings finding rests on 45 sessions and shows association, not cause.
The results describe people using Bloom for workplace development and should not be read as representative of the wider workforce.
Frequently asked questions
How do you set boundaries at work?
Start with what matters most and say yes to that first. Then make changes you control: block focus time in your diary, save demanding work for the part of the day when you’re at your best, and set an end-of-day cut-off. In Bloom’s data, people completed 72% of goals like these within six months.
How do you say no at work without damaging relationships?
Offer an alternative to a flat refusal. A “not now” with a date, a pointer to useful resources, a handover to someone better placed or an offer to work on it together all count as a no, and each keeps the relationship intact.
Why are more employees setting boundaries at work?
Workload and burnout are both rising. Workload came up in 41% of Bloom coaching sessions in July 2026, and burnout in 24%, double November 2025. People are responding by changing how they work: boundary goals rose from 11% to 21% of work-life balance goals in a year.
Do boundary goals actually stick?
Mostly, yes. People completed 72% of goals to protect focus time, control meetings or set an end-of-day cut-off within six months. Goals that involve saying no to other people were completed 58% of the time.
How do meetings affect work-life balance?
In Bloom’s data, 51% of sessions that mentioned back-to-back meetings or a lack of focus time also involved boundary struggles, against 20% of other sessions. That is an association rather than proof of cause, but cutting meetings is one of the fastest ways to give people time back.
What can employers do to support boundaries at work?
Make workload conversations a normal part of the job, retire recurring meetings that no longer earn their place, judge people on what they deliver rather than how busy they look, and fix the processes that keep causing stress.
Stefanie Midmer
Career and personal development coach
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