Sometimes you have an employee who is your go-to when you need someone to go the extra mile to get a task or project across the finish line.
However, each time you ask them to step up, you get a little less from them every time, until finally they’re only delivering on what is expected of them, which isn’t bad… but it wasn’t as good as it used to be. If this sounds familiar, you’re likely dealing with an employee who is quiet quitting.
And we’ve got even more bad news for you:
It’s not them, it’s you.
Their new fondness for complacency and lack of initiative isn’t them not showing up, it’s because you’ve proven to them that effort goes unrewarded.
This article is your invitation to take some medicine, learn the quiet quitting meaning, and how you can prevent it or turn the tide with an employee who is currently quiet quitting on you.
What Is Quiet Quitting?
Quiet quitting (sometimes referred to as silent quitting) describes an exit process in which an employee is present and performing their main obligations but doesn’t volunteer or help with responsibilities beyond their job description.
One important distinction to make is that this applies only to an employee who used to exceed your expectations but suddenly dropped their pace and is not as active as they once were. The reason we want to say this is that there’s nothing wrong with an employee doing only what they agreed to when accepting the position. Quiet quitting is something else entirely.
An employee who is quietly quitting is someone who is now setting boundaries they once didn’t have before:
- Declining overtime
- Declining extra responsibilities
- Treating the minimum requirements as the ceiling
The employee isn’t doing badly, and they’re not being toxic or disruptive — they have simply realized there is no reward in going the extra mile.
What does this mean? If someone shows signs of quiet quitting, you’re letting them down as an employer or manager. Quiet quitting means an employee has been taught that putting in extra effort doesn’t lead to promotions or bonuses, so why bother?
And there is a term for the reverse of this happening — quiet firing. This is when a position is made so unrewarding and unpleasant that a worker is forced to resign, so businesses don’t have to pay severance packages by firing them.
According to a report published by Gallup, 59% of employees were described as fitting the quiet-quitting profile.
But what exactly is the profile of a quiet quitter?
Quiet Cracking Vs. Quiet Quitting: Quiet cracking is different from quitting and firing — this is where an employee is losing motivation from burnout, feeling trapped, and emotionally detached from their work.
9 Signs of Quiet Quitting an Employee Might Display
Quiet quitting tends to emerge over a period of time, as a pattern of small behavioral shifts as opposed to a worker coming in one day and suddenly disengaging.
And because an employee who is quiet quitting isn’t intending to leave or look for another job, the changes are more subtle than any resignation red flags. You might believe this isn’t the case for your own workforce, but the data suggests otherwise. The same Gallup report shows that 77% of employees worldwide lack enthusiasm for their jobs and don't feel meaningfully committed to their employers.
With a figure this high, it’s easy to understand how easy it is for quiet quitting to show up in the workplace. So, if you’re curious if an employee is quiet quitting or not, here are the signs you can watch out for:
1. Minimum-Effort Output.
Your employee who used to show up more and put in the effort is now only completing what is assigned to them, and has stopped:
- Volunteering for projects outside their role
- Suggesting improvements
- Staying late when a deadline is approaching
Their output is fine and meets the requirements of the job.
2. Declining Meeting Engagement
During 1:1s, briefings, or group meetings, it used to be that your employee would speak up to contribute ideas, ask questions, or push back on assumptions, but now they have vanished into the background. If they’re attending a meeting virtually, they may start switching their camera off, or they might stop offering any input during meetings, and over time, they have become a more passive attendee.
Pro tip: Declining eNPS scores could also indicate that your employees are quiet quitting. Learn more about the NPS formula and how to use it for assessing how well your workers are doing.
3. Rigid Adherence to Working Hours
They used to have a more flexible schedule, perhaps staying later than others or arriving earlier, but now you can guarantee that they’re in the office or online for the hours they are paid to be there. If you're an employer who offers overtime, they might start declining it. If you need them to take on extra urgent work, they will push back and decline.
4. Transactional Communication
Communication between you and your employee has shifted from a more collaborative tone or maybe more informal small talk, to something that is purely functional. What was once a dialogue is now a lot of “okay” or “noted” in its place.
5. Increased Absenteeism
Once you might have had to force them to take time off, but now they’re hardly available, booking more sick days, making more PTO requests, or taking slightly longer lunch breaks than before.
6. A Plateau Rather Than a Decline in Quality
They used to work hard, and you could see the quality of their work increasing every time they delivered something, but their work hasn’t gotten worse. It hasn’t improved either — it’s flatlined. They aren’t progressing anymore, but are still meeting deadlines and producing acceptable outputs.
7. Withdrawal from Colleagues
You’ve noticed that they aren’t interacting with their colleagues as much anymore, beyond the interactions that are necessary for the job. They are at the team functions, but they’re:
- Skipping social events
- Eating lunch alone
- Stepping back from relationships
8. Loss of Interest in Career Development
When they were an employee who was going above and beyond, their interest in growth might have come up in conversations about promotions, training, or skill-development opportunities. But now these types of talks have disappeared, and the quiet quitter has stopped tracking their own progress during 360 feedback assessments and answers vaguely when asked any questions about it.
9. A Flatter Emotional Register
When someone is quiet quitting, they are not emotional (no enthusiasm, frustration, or anger). When you talk to them now, they’re slightly detached, and if you give them positive or negative feedback, they barely register it at all.
It’s not going to be a case of one sign indicating that an employee is quiet quitting. A busy week or a rough personal patch can lead to the same signs. However, if it is a pattern that has developed over time, you might have a disengaged employee on your hands.
How Employers Can Prevent and Respond to Quiet Quitting
So, you’ve looked at the signs and perhaps have noticed this might apply to one or two people on your team — what can you do next? Or better yet, how can you stop more people from quiet quitting?
First, you shouldn’t treat this as a performance problem to be punished (as they’re not underperforming, you’re underdelivering). What you’re going to need to do is repair what management researchers call the psychological contract and establish a company culture that rewards hard work. And you can do this by following the advice below.
Rebuilding the Psychological Contract
The psychological contract is an unwritten and unspoken agreement between employees and employers that defines expectations in the relationship.
The expectations outlined in this contract change from generation to generation, going from a paycheck for doing work, to a more relationship-based one, where employers are expected to offer:
- Growth
- Meaningful work
- Genuine support
Quiet quitting starts when an employee comes to the conclusion that the above list isn’t delivered by the employer, leading the employee to scale back their effort to one where they simply do the work and get paid for it.
To overcome this, a manager is going to need to rebuild an employee's trust (preferably at the earliest stage of employment).
They’re going to need to be transparent with expectations, exposing the appealing and unappealing aspects of the job, as opposed to vague promises of all the good things that will eventually come (but never do from the employee's perspective).
It also means recognizing that quiet quitting often reflects an identity shift within the employee: treating them according to who they are now, rather than as a fixed "quiet quitter" label, tends to reopen engagement more effectively.
High-quality work design matters as well. Employees stay engaged when their tasks are varied and meaningful, goals are clear, and they have real autonomy over how, when, and where they work. Equally important is keeping demands reasonable, since scaling back effort under fatigue is a natural protective response rather than a deliberate act of defiance. A hybrid or remote environment adds complication too, since reduced in-person contact weakens the social connection that keeps people engaged beyond the minimum.
Bringing people back into shared spaces helps only if that time builds authentic connection rather than simply enforcing presence.
Practical Steps to Prevent Disengagement
Clarifying expectations is foundational, as only 47% of employees strongly agree they understand what's expected of them. Employers should review job descriptions for realism, clearly distinguish between core duties and voluntary overtime, and document these conversations so expectations can be enforced once set.
Protecting personal time matters just as much: making clear that after-hours emails and calls are optional and setting explicit guidelines for what counts as an urgent message reduce the sense that boundaries exist in name only.
Recognition carries outsized weight relative to its cost:
66% of employees report they begin quiet quitting specifically when they feel unappreciated, and organizations with strong recognition programs see about 31% lower voluntary turnover. This needs to be routine rather than occasional — infrequent gestures like a pizza party rarely move the needle.
Career development deserves particular attention, since 80% of millennials expect a promotion within their first two years. Providing visible pathways through training, mentorship, or explicit discussion of long-term goals directly addresses this.
Fair compensation remains a baseline requirement: Costco sees roughly 8% turnover against a retail industry average closer to 60%, a gap linked directly to its higher wages and benefits. Mental health support follows similar logic at scale — the WHO estimates $1 trillion in lost productivity annually tied to untreated mental health issues, while every dollar invested in depression and anxiety treatment returns roughly four dollars in improved health and productivity.
These levers rarely operate in isolation. At healthy workplaces, 83% of employees agree they're paid fairly, compared to just 17% at unhealthy ones — and similar gaps show up around benefits, communication, and management support. Organizations tend to get these right or wrong together.
Responding Once Quiet Quitting Is Already Underway
The first step is correctly identifying it. Quiet quitters are typically not chronic underperformers but disillusioned high performers pulling back — a previously vocal employee going silent in meetings is often a stronger signal than any productivity metric. Excess workload is a common underlying cause worth checking first, since remaining team members frequently absorb a departed colleague's work while waiting for a replacement.
From there, a direct but supportive conversation works better than ignoring the change or treating it as discipline. Asking whether the employee feels heard, overwhelmed, or under-resourced (framed as a check-in rather than a reprimand) opens space for honesty. Regular listening mechanisms beyond standard productivity metrics help surface these issues before they harden.
In cases where disengagement has progressed too far to reverse, an exit interview still has value — not to recover the departing employee, but to identify what broke down so the pattern doesn't repeat. Some practitioners frame the employee-driven counterpart to this employer effort as "quiet thriving," a term coined by psychotherapist Lesley Alderman to describe employees taking small, deliberate steps to increase their own sense of control at work. The two approaches work best in tandem.
And there we have it! Everything you need to know about the quiet quitting trend and what you can do as an employer to help prevent this from happening.
How TalentHub Helps Companies Build Teams That Stay Engaged
TalentHub is a recruitment partner that has supported the hiring efforts of more than 200 businesses globally since 2019, working with companies ranging from pre-seed startups to Series C and later-stage firms.
TalentHub’s client base includes names like Krattworks, Montonio, Inbank, and Ready Player Me, and recent placements span roles from Head of HR to Mechanical Engineer to Front-End Lead.
TalentHub offers three core services:
- All-Inclusive Recruitment — covers the full hiring process end to end, including a defined hiring plan, custom recruitment strategy, a curated talent pool, and interview coordination.
- Sourcing — a narrower offering focused on building an ideal candidate profile, running a targeted sourcing strategy, and providing market insights and competitor benchmarks to help a company understand where it stands.
- Recruitment Process Outsourcing — sits in between, giving companies a fully managed candidate pipeline along with offer preparation and delivery, without taking over strategy decisions entirely.
What differentiates TalentHub's approach from other talent strategists is a data-driven method for matching candidates to roles and access to a talent pool built specifically around leadership, technical, and niche hard-to-find positions — categories that are typically the hardest and slowest for an internal hiring team to fill on its own.
If you’re looking for help with your company culture and recruiting, book a free consultation directly over on our website.
