Why the Best Leaders Don’t Wait for Quiet Quitting

We spend a lot of time talking about employee disengagement. We measure it, survey it, and try to identify it. When it becomes visible, then we ask: “How do we get our employees engaged again?“

But perhaps we’re asking the question too late. If disengagement develops gradually, as I explored in The Relationship Before the Resignation, then the more important question may be: “What are we doing to sustain engagement before it begins to disappear?” Engagement shouldn’t be something organisations try to recover after it has been lost. It should be something they intentionally cultivate.

We often talk about employee engagement as though it is simply a matter of motivation. Motivate your employees, recognise them, give them incentives, set clear goals, and they will perform. There is certainly value in all of these things. But human motivation is more complex than a reward-and-performance equation.

Research on work engagement has consistently highlighted the importance of the conditions in which people work, including job resources such as support, feedback, autonomy and opportunities for development (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008). In other words, engagement isn’t created simply by asking people to care more. The environment has a role to play.

Most people want to know that what they do has meaning. That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone needs to feel passionately connected to their job every day. Work is still work. Some days are mundane, stressful or simply… Monday. But there is a difference between having an ordinary difficult day and consistently feeling that your contribution doesn’t matter.

Research on self-determination theory suggests that people are more likely to experience healthy, autonomous motivation when three basic psychological needs are supported: autonomy, competence and relatedness (Deci et al., 2017). At work, this can translate into surprisingly simple questions:

Autonomy:
Do I have some ownership over how I do my work?

Competence:
Do I feel capable, supported and able to grow?

Relatedness:
Do I feel that I belong here and that the people around me value my contribution?

When these needs are consistently supported, engagement has somewhere to grow.

One of the clearest signs of disengagement may not be what employees say. It may be what they stop saying. When they stop offering ideas, challenging decisions, asking questions, or volunteering. Eventually, they may stop telling you what is wrong. And silence can be particularly difficult for organisations to interpret because, on the surface, everything may appear fine. The work may still be getting done, meetings attended, and deadlines met. But the absence of complaints does not necessarily mean the presence of engagement.

Psychological safety matters here.

When people believe they can speak up without being embarrassed, punished or dismissed, they are more likely to contribute ideas, raise concerns and participate honestly in their work. Research continues to link psychological safety with employee voice and engagement, including in contemporary remote and hybrid working environments (Edmondson, 1999; Mohase et al., 2025). This means that leaders shouldn’t only ask: “Is everyone okay?” Sometimes the better question is: “What are we not hearing?”

Recognition

Recognition is often reduced to rewards, bonuses and employee-of-the-month certificates, but recognition can be much simpler. Sometimes it is noticing the additional effort someone made, acknowledging an idea, giving credit where credit is due, and sometimes it is simply saying: “I noticed what you did, and it mattered.”

People don’t necessarily need constant praise. They do need to know that their contributions are visible. Perceived organisational support, the extent to which employees believe their organisation values their contribution and cares about their wellbeing, has been associated with important employee outcomes, including engagement (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). The message is not that organisations should constantly reassure employees. It is that employees form perceptions about whether their organisation values them through everyday experiences.

Managers: The Closest Point of Contact

We cannot talk about employee engagement without talking about managers.

For many employees, the organisation is experienced through the person they report to. A company’s values might be displayed beautifully on a website, its employee wellbeing strategy might be comprehensive, and its policies might be excellent. But the day-to-day experience of work is often shaped by much smaller interactions: How does my manager speak to me? Do they listen? Can I ask questions? Do I receive useful feedback? Am I trusted to do my job? Can I admit when I’m struggling? Do I know what is expected of me? These interactions accumulate. A single difficult conversation may not determine someone’s engagement. But repeated experiences of being ignored, micromanaged, dismissed or unsupported can change how someone relates to their work. This is why proactive engagement cannot sit entirely within HR. It has to become part of everyday leadership.

Perhaps the most proactive thing a leader can do is remain curious. Not suspicious. Not constantly monitoring performance. Just curious. When someone’s behaviour changes, instead of immediately assuming: “They’re becoming difficult.” We might ask: “What’s changed?” When someone who was once highly engaged becomes quieter: “Is there something about their experience that we haven’t understood?” And when a team begins showing signs of fatigue: “What are we asking people to sustain, and is it sustainable?” Curiosity does not mean removing accountability. It means making space to understand before deciding how to respond.

Engagement Cannot Be Forced

Perhaps this is the most important part of the conversation.

You cannot force someone to be engaged, but you can create conditions that make engagement more likely. You can build trust, provide clarity, listen, recognise contribution, support development, create psychological safety, give people reasonable autonomy, and notice when something begins to change. That doesn’t guarantee that every employee will remain engaged. People leave organisations for many reasons, and not every departure represents organisational failure. But proactive leadership gives engagement a better chance to flourish.

Perhaps we need to move away from asking: “How do we stop quiet quitting?”and start asking: “What are we doing today that makes people want to remain meaningfully engaged tomorrow?” Because by the time an organisation begins looking for solutions to widespread disengagement, the problem may have been developing for much longer than anyone realised.

The strongest organisations don’t wait for employees to disengage before they start paying attention. They pay attention while people are still talking, still contributing, still asking questions, and still invested enough to care.

Engagement begins long before disengagement.

And perhaps the best time to protect it is before we realise it is at risk.

References

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2008). Towards a model of work engagement. Career Development International, 13(3), 209–223.

Deci, E. L., Olafsen, A. H., & Ryan, R. M. (2017). Self-determination theory in work organizations: The state of a science. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, 19–43.

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Mohase, K., Donald, F., & Israel, N. (2025). Inclusive leadership, psychological safety, and employee voice in remote and hybrid work employees. South African Journal of Psychology, 55(3).

Rhoades, L., & Eisenberger, R. (2002). Perceived organizational support: A review of the literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 698–714.

Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(7), 600–619.