To End Quiet Quitting, Humanize Work

If people are leaving your workplace, or staying but holding themselves back, that is on you as their leader.

A few years ago, everyone was talking about "quiet quitting." The label has faded, but the behavior it described has not. People are still staying in their jobs while choosing to hold back their full effort, ideas and energy. Whatever name it goes by, the responsibility sits in the same place.

The data suggests the problem is real. Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace report found that global employee engagement fell from 23 percent to 21 percent in 2024. That means roughly four out of five people are not fully engaged in their work.

How You See It Reveals Who You Are

Some leaders see disengaged employees as lazy. Others see a natural response to years of being asked to do more and more for less and less. How you view it reveals a lot about the kind of leader you are.

If your instinct is to blame the people, you are missing the point, and missing an opportunity to improve yourself and your organization.

People who hold back are rarely lazy. More often, they are burned out. Some of the reasons are obvious: a pandemic that upended how we work, economic uncertainty and roles that keep changing under people's feet. But plenty of the reasons began long before any of that. People are tired of being stifled by leaders who don't trust or value them.

If there's no freedom to take a risk without fear of being punished for a bad result, why take the risk? If no one acknowledges what people are capable of, why would they offer more?

People Want to Contribute

That is also where the opportunity lies. When people see evidence that it is safe and beneficial to try, to experiment and to work at their fullest capacity, they will. They want to.

People want the chance to show you what they can do. They have experience and insight. They want to stretch. But they don't see those opportunities in their jobs today. The question every leader should be asking is: what would need to change for people not only to stay, but to contribute fully?

Humanize Work

I once interviewed the president and CEO of Tufts Medicine on my Personalization Outbreak Podcast about this very issue. He described his view of leadership in a way that has stayed with me: the people who report to him are not there to make him successful. His job is to make them successful. And if every leader does the same for the people who report to them, that philosophy carries all the way to the front line and the customer.

His senior team landed on a simple phrase to guide their approach: humanize work. That phrase flips the script. It puts responsibility where it belongs, with leaders.

Rather than treating disengaged people as if they are cheating you out of productivity, consider that you might be cheating them out of a healthy, human-centered workplace.

Three Steps to Humanize Work

1. Acknowledge what people have been through. There are legitimate reasons people are exhausted, even if they have had your full support. Name the pressure. Then look for ways to turn lessons from difficult years into opportunities to redesign work, rather than simply treating them as challenges to endure.
2. Write new rules. Examine both official policies and unofficial expectations about availability and output. An official policy that says people don't have to answer email after hours is meaningless if individual leaders quietly reward those who respond at midnight. Create real quiet periods. Encourage people to use their time off and truly disconnect so they can replenish themselves.
3. Pay attention to every level. It is easy to focus only on the front line. But everyone, including managers and senior leaders, has felt the strain. Wellbeing has to be a priority for the whole organization, not a program for one group.

What People Are Holding Back

Almost everyone is holding something back:

• A good idea
• A better way of doing the work
• An informed opinion
• The full extent of their abilities

Their reasons may be sound. More often than not, they have been stifled by the status quo. But when new technologies and business models can make your products obsolete before you see it coming, you cannot afford an organization full of people whose capacity is held back. I have written about what happens when you stop holding back at work; leaders have to create the conditions that make that possible.

Look for the Person Who Went Quiet

Start with the person on your team who used to volunteer ideas and no longer does. Ask what changed, and listen without defending yourself. Then look at the unwritten rules you reinforce about availability, and at the smart risks that were punished because they didn't work out. Those are the signals people read far more closely than any policy.

Humanizing work is not a perk. It is how you bring the energy back to work, and it begins with the leader.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.