Quiet quitting is when employees do only what their role requires, no more, no less, rather than working with flexibility and initiative within a role.. While they remain in their job, they disengage from extra or different responsibilities, often as a way to protect their wellbeing and avoid burnout. Silent quitting is another term often used interchangeably with quiet quitting. Regardless of which term is used, both refer to employee disengagement.
Disengaged employees can result in significant costs for employers. According to the Australian HR Institute, employee disengagement costs the Australian economy $211 billion per year. Therefore, it is important management work towards mitigating burnout and maintaining engagement to achieve organisational goals. To do so, staff need to feel a sense of purpose, value, and recognition. This can help reduce disengagement and allow employees to take it upon themselves to expand or adjust rather than avoid patterns and solutions that move fluidly within their roles.
In this article, we’ll explore the definition of quiet quitting, how it originated, signs of silent quitting, and solutions to prevent quiet quitting. One of the most effective ways organisations address this is through an Employee Assistance Program (EAP). EAP can help employees find balance, remain engaged in their work, and prevent quiet quitting from taking hold through expert counselling and support.
Key Takeaways: Quiet quitting and mental health
Setting clear boundaries can help employees manage their wellbeing proactively.
The role of the employee and the role of leaders should be clearly defined to ensure staff symptoms of burn out are avoided, and business goals are optimised.
An Employee Assistance Program can play a significant role in helping employees adopt a good work-life balance, prevent presenteeism, and help organisations flourish.
What Is Quiet Quitting and Why Quiet Quitting Matters
Quiet quitting refers to employees disengaging from discretionary effort while remaining in their roles. It reflects disengagement rather than resignation and is often driven by fear of burnout, lack of recognition, or poor leadership.
Quiet quitting is not the same as resignation. Instead, it indicates a shift in employee expectations around work-life balance and boundaries. There is a balance, however. If employees align with your organisational culture, feel a sense of purpose and value in their work, are recognised for their efforts, and wellbeing is prioritised, you can minimise the risk of reduced discretionary effort and increase the chance of achieving and maintaining high-performance. After all, quiet quitting is predominantly reflective of employee disengagement, which can arise from being undervalued, unrecognised, and burnt out.
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“Quiet quitting is a major risk for organisations across Australia because employees are no longer willing to accept high workloads as the norm. Since COVID-19, we’ve seen a shift in employee priorities, and if organisations do not realign with these values and meet employee needs, quiet quitting may continue long into the future.”
Cate Page
Chief Clinical Officer, Converge.
Quick Summary
Quiet Quitting Explained
Quiet quitting means doing the minimum required at work.
It is often driven by stress, poor leadership, or lack of recognition.
It can lead to disengagement, lower productivity, and turnover risk.
It is preventable through strong leadership and EAP support.
How Quiet Quitting Originated
The term was coined during the COVID-19 pandemic, where there was a perception that boundaries were being blurred due to working-from-home environments and employees feeling more pressure to work outside of their normal duties and work hours. In response, TikToker zkchillin took to social media to encourage workers to “know their worth and do less”.
Ultimately, the term quiet quitting was designed to promote work-life balance and reduce potential burnout, symptoms of which skyrocketed during the pandemic.
Studies showed that during the COVID-19 era, 41% of respondents experienced elevated exhaustion levels across a number of industries. As of 2025, the rate of burnout has not diminished. Beyond Blue reports that 1 in 2 Australian workers currently report symptoms of burnout and chronic exhaustion.
How does quiet quitting happen?
Pressure Builds
An employee who is handling a high workload may continue to perform, but they may become increasingly agitated by low levels of recognition from management.
Disengagement Begins
This can then lead to disengagement. The employee may collaborate less, decline additional duties and hours, and communication drops.
Performance Declines
The fall in productivity leads to reduced business outcomes: potential financial loss, lower quality control, and often challenges with customer and employee retention.
Negative Impact Spreads
Other employees begin to notice and question their own output, whether they’re being valued, and if they’re recognised for their efforts.
Culture Erodes
The cycle continues creating further resentment, disengagement, and low morale. Workplace culture can also begin to erode.
What Causes Quiet Quitting in the Workplace?
Quiet quitting can occur when employee wellbeing is not prioritised, there is little communication, poor leadership, and heavy workloads that lead to exhaustion and symptoms of burnout. As a result, employees can disengage from their work, otherwise known as quiet quitting. Common causes of quiet quitting include:
Excessive workloads leading to reduced motivation: When management sets unrealistic workloads, employees have a higher chance of experiencing stress. To reduce the impact of burnout at work, staff may take it upon themselves to protect their mental health by silent quitting.
Lack of recognition leading to low job satisfaction: Employees who are not acknowledged and recognised, especially when they undertake extra duties, are more likely to feel undervalued and disengaged. Additionally, quiet quitting can occur when cost of living pressures increase and there is a perception that salaries are not aligned.
Poor leadership: When employees are faced with poor leadership, micromanagement, low trust, and little communication, their motivation may decline leading to disengagement.
Growth and flexibility: If career progression paths are not discussed or followed through, or when employers are not flexible with working arrangements when there is a reasonable option employees may become increasingly disengaged, favouring work-life balance over investing effort.
Shouldn’t employees be encouraged to set boundaries?
The tension with “quiet quitting” isn’t about people refusing unpaid extra work. It’s about what happens when discretionary effort disappears completely. Most roles aren’t just a checklist of tasks. They rely on things like:
➡ Helping teammates when needed
➡ Taking initiative to solve problems
➡ Caring about outcomes, not just outputs
➡ Driving innovation and developing key skills for personal growth
When employees stick strictly to the minimum, the organisation often still functions, but more slowly and with more friction, teams can become transactional, rather than collaborative, small issues go unaddressed until they become bigger problems and Innovation can stall.
That said, there’s an important flip side: If people feel overworked, undervalued, or unclear about expectations, pulling back to “just what I’m paid for” can be a rational and healthy boundary, not a failure. So, the real issue isn’t whether employees should do more than they’re paid for, it’s:
- Are expectations fair and clearly defined?
- Are people recognised and supported when they go beyond?
- Is the work challenging enough, aligned to their personal development goals, and are they feeling a sense of worth for investing extra energy?
When those conditions are right, discretionary effort tends to show up naturally. When not, “quiet quitting” is often a signal, not the problem itself.
5 Signs of Quiet Quitting: How to Identify Disengaged Employees
Quiet quitting can be identified through several clear behavioural signs, such as reduced communication and shorter responses, disengagement in meetings, declining work quality, refusal to take on different tasks, and increased presenteeism.
Engaged employees who align with company values and feel valued themselves can be less inclined to participate in quietly quitting. Ultimately, prioritising a wellbeing-oriented culture can prevent quiet quitting from becoming the norm. To ensure your culture is working as it should, here are 5 signs of silent quitting to look for:
Staff decreasing flexibility: Have staff stopped volunteering for different duties or hours – especially in previously high-performance teams? Employees who used to show agility, could mean they are quietly quitting.
Complete social withdrawal: Have employees started to skip optional meetings, join without their camera or microphone on, or disengage from company events? If your staff have become passive observers and participate less, they could be silent quitting.
Meagre communication: An engaged employee will often remain highly responsive and detail oriented. If this begins to dip and previously high-performing staff members begin sending short responses with little detail, their responsiveness becomes more delayed, and they look for less feedback or ask fewer questions, they could be quiet quitting.
Increase in presenteeism: Are your employees there, but they’re not there? Presenteeism is attending work while disengaged. Think: when your employee is sitting at their desk, but their motivation is gone and their output has drastically reduced, are they quiet quitting?
Decline in work quality, resistance to change, and excessive complaints of burnout at work and exhaustion: Has the quality of your projects declined? Have complaints from employees about burnout proliferated? Are employees resisting organisational growth? This could be silent quitting, with errors becoming more frequent through fatigue and disengagement. There may also be an increase of complaints about change which can often be due to motivation declining.
Why Quiet Quitting Is a Risk for Organisations
Quiet quitting is a significant risk because when employees become disengaged, their performance drops, leading to more mistakes, delays in communication, and missed business opportunities and objectives – often costly for employers. Challenges for organisations can include:
- Operational disruption and reduced output
- Lulls in productivity and quality
- Low employee morale
- Risk of turnover
- Economic and financial loss
The 2023 State of the Global Workplace Report reports that 47% of employees are experiencing high levels of stress, some of whom will be high-performing employees. This can have a domino effect: when high performers disengage, others may reevaluate their commitment to their organisation. Other staff members may ask: “if they’re disengaged because they’re not being valued, what does that mean for me?” After all, the trend of quietly quitting correlates with low morale, poor work-life balance, little recognition, and unclear expectations.
Gallup found that employee engagement dropped to 20% globally – its lowest level since 2020. Additionally, “Gallup research finds the percentage of employees who report experiencing a lot of stress, anger or sadness the previous day remains above pre-pandemic levels.”
Converge data paints a clear picture: of those who report low job satisfaction, 48% said this directly correlated with a workplace issue. Similarly, of those who reported low performance, 59% said it was caused by a work-related challenge. With quiet quitting becoming more prevalent, creating a workplace culture in which wellbeing is the foundation and staff feel valued and appreciated can help minimise low job satisfaction and optimise performance.
Quiet Quitting: The Benefits of EAP Support
EAP has shown clear benefits in improving employee engagement. Through counselling and specialised support, employees can identify issues such as challenges in prioritising, setting boundaries and identify opportunities to expand their skillset. Equally, EAP can help managers to lead more effectively through easy-to-implement strategies.
Finally, EAP provides employees with a confidential forum to discuss challenges and develop practical coping strategies to thrive inside and outside of the workplace. Let’s explore in more detail how EAP helps prevent quiet quitting…
How to Prevent Quiet Quitting with EAP Support
Organisations can reduce quiet quitting through an Employee Assistance Program (EAP). EAP addresses the root causes of workplace disengagement, such as burnout, poor communication, and lack of support. By providing employees and leaders with access to expert guidance, EAP helps create a more engaged, resilient, and productive workforce.
How EAP Helps Prevent Quiet Quitting
EAP supports both employees and organisations by improving wellbeing, strengthening leadership, and addressing workplace challenges early. Key ways EAP prevents quiet quitting include:
Supporting employee mental health and wellbeing: EAP provides confidential counselling and support services that help employees manage stress, burnout, and personal challenges – reducing the likelihood of employee disengagement.
Building healthier boundaries and work-life balance: Employees can develop practical strategies to manage workloads, set boundaries, and maintain work life balance, preventing potential withdrawal and disengagement.
Improving leadership capability: Managers play a critical role in engagement. EAP equips leaders with tools to communicate effectively, recognise effort, and support their teams proactively.
Addressing issues early before they escalate: Early intervention is key. EAP enables employees to seek help before stress turns into symptoms of burnout, fatigue, or quiet quitting behaviours.
Enhancing communication and workplace relationships: Through coaching and counselling, EAP helps improve collaboration, reduce conflict, and strengthen team dynamics.
Practical Ways Organisations Can Use EAP to Reduce Quiet Quitting
To effectively mitigate quiet quitting, organisations should integrate EAP into their broader workplace strategy. This includes:
- Promoting EAP regularly to ensure employees are aware of available support
- Encouraging leaders to actively refer and normalise EAP usage
- Training employees in wellbeing strategies and embedding wellbeing into workplace culture, not just as a reactive solution
- Using insights and reporting (where available) to identify emerging risks
- Aligning EAP with broader employee engagement and wellbeing initiatives
Why EAP Is Critical for Preventing Employee Disengagement
Quiet quitting is not a performance issue; it’s a signal that employees are disengaged or struggling. Without the right support, this can lead to reduced productivity, increased turnover, and long-term cultural challenges.
EAP provides a proactive solution by:
- Supporting employees before disengagement escalates
- Equipping leaders to manage teams more effectively
- Creating a psychologically safe environment where employees feel supported and valued
Key Takeaway: Preventing Quiet Quitting Starts with Support
Preventing quiet quitting requires more than setting expectations—it requires organisations to actively support employee wellbeing and engagement. An Employee Assistance Program plays a critical role by providing the tools, support, and expertise needed to keep employees connected, motivated, and performing at their best.
Organisations that proactively invest in employee wellbeing and EAP support are better positioned to sustain engagement, reduce turnover, and build resilient, high-performing teams.
Quiet Quitting Frequently Asked Questions
What is quiet quitting?
Quiet quitting is when employees perform only the tasks required in their role rather than working with flexibility and initiative within a role. It reflects disengagement rather than resignation, often driven by burnout, poor leadership, or lack of recognition.
What causes quiet quitting in the workplace?
Quiet quitting is typically caused by excessive workloads, lack of recognition, poor leadership, limited career growth, and poor work-life balance. These factors lead employees to disengage as a way to protect their wellbeing.
What are the signs of quiet quitting?
Common signs include reduced effort, minimal communication, lack of participation in meetings, declining work quality, and increased presenteeism. Employees may also stop volunteering for additional tasks.
How does quiet quitting impact organisations?
Quiet quitting can reduce productivity, lower employee morale, increase turnover risk, and impact overall business performance. It can also create a ripple effect, influencing other employees to disengage.
How can EAP prevent quiet quitting?
An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) helps prevent quiet quitting by supporting mental health, improving leadership capability, encouraging work-life balance, and addressing workplace issues early through counselling and coaching.
