Leadership Minute: Dealing With Quit-But-Stayers

It's important to identify people who are checked out but still showing up to work--and to be able to tell if you're doing that yourself

I bet you’ve seen this movie before.

A team member resigns, maybe with a polite email or a short, cordial conversation. You thank them for their contributions and wish them well and they leave two weeks later.

But once they’re gone, the real story begins.

In the weeks that follow, their departure is the gift that keeps on giving. You find client emails left unanswered. Follow-ups that were never sent. A shared doc last touched months ago. Important CRM updates that no one noticed had stopped happening.

You start remembering the warning signs. Months ago, the person stopped engaging in meetings. They replied to emails with one-liners—or not at all. They started missing deadlines. Their excuses increased. Their camera stayed off. They had a sudden surge of “doctor’s appointments.”

The truth is, they probably quit six months before they actually left.

Employees who quit and stay cause far more damage than those who simply leave. Organizational psychologists call these people “disengaged stayers,” and Gallup estimates about 50 percent of all employees are disengaged but still on the payroll.

Not only are these quit-but-stayers hurting clients, colleagues, and the company overall through their lack of engagement but they are also depriving the organization of the opportunity to hire someone who will be engaged in the role.

As a leader you need to know how to deal with a quit-but-stayer. You also need to do the more challenging work of deciding what to do if you realize that you’re the quit-but-stayer yourself.

Identifying A Quit-but-Stayer

The signs of disengagement are always obvious in hindsight—as the litany of examples above tells us. The first step of identifying a quit-but-stayer is to regularly check-in with people about their engagement or performance, which provides an entry point to take stock of how everyone is doing and identify any slippages in effort or results.

If a team member’s quality of work declines visibly, that’s a warning sign. It should prompt some questions if a star player who always nails client meetings starts showing up unprepared. The same is true for a team player who gradually stops raising their hand to help others, or a social butterfly who stops showing up to company events.

Of course, these warning signs don’t always mean the person is checked out. Sometimes, they may under a high degree of stress due to a personal issue. But it is still good to check in with people who sink below their usual standard just to see if everything is ok—whatever the issue may be.

Address The Issue