Every business has them: once-energised team members who now just do the bare minimum.
Not disruptive, not underperforming. Just disengaged and coasting.
This is quiet quitting, and it’s not harmless. It’s a slow leak in your culture and a red flag for your leadership.
Quiet quitting isn’t about laziness. It’s what happens when effort goes unrewarded, when trust erodes, or when people stop believing their work matters.
If you want to fix it, don’t look at the employees first, look at the environment they’re operating in. Spot the signals early, and you can reignite motivation before disengagement becomes your default culture.
Quiet quitting is just a modern label for an old problem: disengagement. It’s what happens when people stop caring. Not enough to leave; just enough to coast. They do their job, but the spark is gone. No initiative, no curiosity, no stretch.
Sometimes that’s fair. When hard work is ignored, boundaries are trampled, or burnout hits, stepping back is a survival strategy, not a sign of laziness.
But make no mistake, the cost is real.
According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report, global employee engagement dropped from 23% to 21%. The report also puts a number on it: $438 billion in lost productivity due to disengagement.
Why it matters:
Quiet quitting hides in plain sight. It won’t show up on a dashboard but you’ll feel it in every meeting, every missed opportunity, and every time someone stops raising their hand.
Why do people quietly quit? Because they’ve stopped believing it’s worth caring.
It can be a logical reaction to a broken environment. When the workplace stops feeling fair, human, or hopeful, people disengage. Not loudly. Just enough to stop trying.
Here’s what drives that slow fade to silence:
Zero psychological safety
If people don’t feel safe to ask questions, admit mistakes, or challenge decisions, they shut down. Over time, silence becomes self-preservation.
“In environments lacking psychological safety, employees are more likely to hide mistakes, avoid difficult conversations, and disengage emotionally.” – Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School
No visible path forward
When progression is murky or stalled, ambition dies. If your best people don’t see a future, don’t be surprised when they stop investing in the present.
Effort without recognition
People don’t need constant praise. But they do need to feel seen. If no one notices when they go the extra mile, they’ll stop going.
Burnout masked as dedication
Just because someone’s still delivering doesn’t mean they’re okay. Sustained overwork without relief leads to emotional numbness. You get the output, but none of the energy or initiative.
Bad management, plain and simple
According to Gallup, 70% of engagement comes down to the manager. If that relationship is broken, people switch off.
Values without action
If leadership preaches one thing and practices another, people notice. When values become window dressing, cynicism sets in, and disengagement isn’t far behind.
Quiet quitting isn’t a mystery. It’s a mirror. And if it’s happening in your business, it’s not on your team, it’s on your culture.
People don’t check out because they’re unhappy, they check out because they’re overwhelmed.
In fast-moving teams, quiet quitting often isn’t driven by dissatisfaction. It’s driven by noise, chaos, and neglect.
Onboarding gets rushed. Recognition slips. Communication breaks down. Leadership is too busy firefighting to notice who’s drifting.
And without clear signals of purpose, support, or belonging, people retreat. They stop pushing, stop questioning, and start playing it safe.
If you wait until it shows up in a performance review, you’re too late. The only fix is to lead with more intention, earlier.
Quiet quitting rarely shows up in dashboards. The signs are subtle, but they’re there if you’re paying attention.
Watch for:
This isn’t underperformance. It’s detachment.
Don’t wait for the annual review to sound the alarm. That shift in behaviour is often your earliest warning. Ignore it, and the cost won’t be visible until it’s too late.
You don’t turn quiet quitters into top performers with pep talks or pizza Fridays. You do it by leading differently, and fixing the environment that caused them to check out in the first place.
Here are three real shifts leaders need to make:
People stop caring when they stop feeling seen. Recognition should go beyond KPIs and deadlines, it should reflect who someone is, not just what they do.
At Patagonia, recognition is tied to values. Employees are celebrated for living the mission, whether that’s volunteering, challenging suppliers on ethics, or supporting colleagues. It builds pride and identity.
Call out the how, not just the what. Did someone show composure under pressure? Empathy in a difficult call? That’s what sticks.
Autonomy without direction feels like abandonment. People don’t just want freedom, they want to know what it’s for.
Spotify’s ‘squad’ model fixes this. Teams operate like startups, choosing their own tools, timelines, and tactics but every squad is anchored to a bigger mission. That’s what unlocks real motivation.
Let people pitch ideas, but ask them to link each one to a customer need or business challenge. It encourages ownership and focus.
You can have a strong culture on paper and still lose people. What matters more is a sense of community and belonging.
As the company grew rapidly, it developed a Culture Code deck that clearly outlines what matters most: autonomy, transparency, humility, and heart.
They embedded their HEART values (Humble, Empathetic, Adaptable, Remarkable, Transparent) into hiring, feedback, and recognition systems. New joiners are welcomed through buddy systems and value-based onboarding.
Recognition isn’t based on output alone, it’s tied to how people show up and support others.
One disengaged employee may be a personal issue, but if it’s happening across teams, the problem isn’t them, it’s you.
Quiet quitting at scale is never about individual laziness. It’s the cultural fallout of bad habits and broken leadership systems.
Here’s what to watch for:
Fix the environment, not just the individuals. Culture is either built with intention or it defaults to dysfunction.
Turning quiet quitters into high performers isn’t about piling on pressure or launching another perks programme. It’s about rebuilding trust, clarity, and purpose.
The best leaders don’t paper over disengagement. They notice the early warning signs, have the hard conversations, and give people reasons to care again. That could mean reshaping recognition, giving teams more meaningful autonomy, or aligning rewards with long-term outcomes.
Sometimes, that alignment is financial too. Tools like share schemes don’t just incentivise performance, they give employees a genuine stake in the outcome, helping people feel part of the mission, not just the payroll.
If quiet quitting is becoming the norm, it’s not a process problem. It’s a cultural one. And it’s your move.