A team leader in a Riyadh head office notices that one of her best analysts has changed. He still meets every deadline. But he no longer stays for the late call, and for the first time in three years he says "that's not in my scope". Her first thought is that he has become lazy. Her second is that he is quiet quitting.
The second thought is closer. But the label points at the wrong person.
The short answer: quiet quitting means doing exactly what the job requires and no more, while staying in the job. The term went viral on TikTok in July 2022. Gallup's 2026 report says "not engaged employees are quietly quitting", and 64% of employees worldwide were not engaged in 2025. Research links quiet quitting to broken promises and weak management more than to any one generation. The fix starts with clear expectations, recognition and regular conversations, not perks or warnings.
What quiet quitting means, and where the term came from
The phrase spread in the summer of 2022. NPR traced it to a TikTok video posted in July 2022 by the user @zkchillin, now @zaidleppelin. Within weeks, #quietquitting had 8.2 million views on TikTok. As NPR put it, quiet quitting "doesn't actually involve quitting".
Truit Gray and colleagues (2025), writing in Human Resource Management, built and tested a measure of it and defined quiet quitting as "intentionally performing to the minimum requirements of the job".
Two parts of that definition matter.
- Intentional. It is a choice, not a skills gap or a bad week. The person could give more and decides not to.
- To the minimum. The core work still gets done. What disappears is the extra: helping a new colleague, fixing a problem nobody owns, staying late when a client calls.
That is why it is hard to see. It shows up as missing effort, not as a missed target.
What the latest Gallup data says
Gallup does not measure quiet quitting directly. It classifies employees as engaged, not engaged or actively disengaged, using a proprietary formula based on its twelve-item Q12 survey. Its State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, based on 141,444 employed respondents in more than 140 countries surveyed in 2025, describes not engaged employees as "quietly quitting": they are "putting time but not energy or passion into their work". Actively disengaged employees, in Gallup's words, are "loudly quitting".
| Where | Engaged | Not engaged ("quietly quitting") | Actively disengaged | Base |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| World | 20% | 64% | 16% | 2025 data, 141,444 employed respondents |
| Middle East and North Africa | 14% | 61% | 25% | Three years of polling to 2025; Gallup's region also includes Iran, Israel and Türkiye |
| Egypt | 4% | 58% | 38% | Three-year rolling average to 2025 |
| Saudi Arabia | 26% | 62% | 11% | Three-year rolling average to 2025 |
| United Arab Emirates | 27% | 60% | 13% | Three-year rolling average to 2025 |
Read the table with care. Country figures carry margins of error of up to about seven points, Gallup's "engaged" is a high bar, and none of these averages is a benchmark for your company. Our article on what 20% engaged means explains why.
What the table shows is scale. In every row the largest group is the middle: people who show up, do the job and hold back the rest. Gallup ranks the Middle East and North Africa second to last in the world for engagement.
We found no large, representative study of quiet quitting itself in Egypt or the Gulf. The Gallup categories are the closest regional evidence there is.
Quiet quitting vs burnout, and other look-alikes
Quiet quitting is often confused with burnout and with healthy boundaries. Each needs a different response.
| What you see | What it is | What is usually behind it | The response that fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core work done, extras withdrawn, by choice | Quiet quitting | A promise the person feels was broken; a manager relationship that went cold | A conversation about what changed, then fix the cause |
| Exhaustion, cynicism, falling performance | Burnout | Chronic workplace stress that has not been managed (WHO) | Reduce the load and the demands; this is a health issue, not an attitude |
| Open resentment, undermining colleagues | Active disengagement ("loud quitting" in Gallup's terms) | Often the same causes, further along | Direct management action, and a look at the team around them |
| Leaves at 5 p.m., still helps when it really matters | Healthy boundaries | A sustainable way to work | Nothing. Do not punish it |
The World Health Organization describes burnout as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, with three dimensions: exhaustion, mental distance from the job, and reduced professional efficacy. Quiet quitting can overlap with the second. But a quiet quitter is not necessarily exhausted, and their output may not fall. If the person is depleted, treat it as burnout first.
It is usually a reaction to the job, not a generation
The common story is that quiet quitting is a Gen Z attitude. The evidence points elsewhere.
It follows broken promises. Gray and colleagues tested their model on 540 employees. When people felt the organisation had kept its promises about fairness and the job itself, they were more satisfied and less likely to quit quietly. When they felt those promises were broken, quiet quitting rose, through lower job satisfaction. Quiet quitting in turn predicted more counterproductive behaviour and less helping. This builds on research on the psychological contract: the unwritten deal an employee believes they have. A meta-analysis by Hao Zhao and colleagues (2007) found that breach of that contract was related to seven of the eight work outcomes studied, including job satisfaction, commitment, helping behaviour and in-role performance. Actual turnover was the exception. Breach hurts the people who stay.
It is an old response with a new name. In 1988, Caryl Rusbult and colleagues described four responses to dissatisfaction at work: exit, voice, loyalty and neglect. Neglect, letting effort slide, is close to what is now called quiet quitting. Satisfaction and investment in the job discouraged it. Better job alternatives encouraged leaving, but had no link to neglect. That matters in a region where only 36% of employees in Gallup's data say it is a good time to find a job. Our reading: when leaving is hard, withdrawing is what remains.
It is a way of reshaping the job. Job crafting is the changes people make to their own jobs. Paul Bruning and Michael Campion (2018) separated approach crafting, such as taking on more, from avoidance crafting, such as cutting back the role. Avoidance crafting was linked to work withdrawal and to fewer positive outcomes. Quiet quitting looks like avoidance crafting done on purpose.
The generation story does not hold up well. Gallup did find in 2022 that engagement fell among US employees below age 35. But the fall was in feeling cared about and having chances to develop, "primarily from their manager". That is a description of how young people were managed, not of who they are. A 2020 report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that a focus on generational categories in managing people can be misguided and is more likely to feed stereotyping, partly because most studies cannot separate the effect of a generation from the effect of age or time.
The obvious answer, and why to test it
The first obvious answer is more perks: a wellbeing app, a resilience workshop, a team lunch. William Fleming (2024) compared participants and non-participants in common individual-level wellbeing programmes, including resilience training, mindfulness and wellbeing apps, using survey data from 46,336 workers in 233 UK organisations. Across several wellbeing measures, participants were no better off. The data is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove cause, but it gives no support to perks as a fix. Perks do not repair a broken promise.
The second is to performance-manage people out. The problem is in the definition. Someone who is quiet quitting is doing the minimum the job requires, so a performance process has nothing to catch. If Gallup's figures are even roughly right for your company, you are talking about the majority of your staff, and a warning letter does nothing to repair a broken promise.
Test both against your own data. If the drop is in clarity, recognition or the manager relationship, neither perks nor warnings touch the cause.
What managers can do
The evidence points at the manager. Gallup's own 2022 analysis called quiet quitting "a symptom of poor management". In data on 2,801 managers rated by 13,048 direct reports, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman (2022) found that the lowest-rated managers (first to ninth percentile) had 14% of their reports quietly quitting, and only 20% willing to give extra effort. Managers rated highest for balancing results with concern for people had 3% quietly quitting and 62% willing to give extra effort. These are a consultancy's own 360-degree ratings, not a random sample, but the gap is large. Our article on whether your manager is why engagement fell looks at the manager claim in Gallup's latest numbers.
| Habit | What it looks like | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Make expectations clear | Agree what "done" and "good" look like for each role; write down what is in scope and what is extra | Gallup tied the 2022 US fall to clarity of expectations; Gray and colleagues point to communicating expectations accurately |
| Keep the promises you make | Do not oversell the role, the growth path or the flexibility in hiring; if something changes, say so and explain why | Broken promises predict quiet quitting; kept ones reduce it |
| Recognise good work, specifically and often | Name the piece of work and why it mattered, soon after it happens | Gallup and Workhuman tracked nearly 3,500 employees from 2022 to 2024: well-recognised employees were 45% less likely to have left two years later |
| Hold one real conversation a week | 15-30 minutes with each team member about their work, progress and what is getting in the way | Gallup names this as the habit to build; it is where a manager learns what changed |
| Measure it by team | Ask about expectations, recognition and development in a regular survey, reported by team | Quiet quitting clusters around managers; a company average hides where it is |
Our employee recognition model sets out how to build recognition people believe. To see where the middle group sits in your company, the GK Engagement Survey runs in Arabic or English and reports results team by team.
Your next step
This week, ask each person on your team one question in your next one-to-one: what is one thing you were promised, or expected, that has not happened? Write the answers down without arguing. Fix the one you can fix within a month, and tell the team you did.
Frequently asked questions
What is quiet quitting at work?
Quiet quitting at work means doing the tasks your job requires and nothing beyond them, while staying in the job. Researchers define it as intentionally performing to the minimum requirements of the job. The person does not resign, and their core work usually still gets done.
What is the meaning of quiet quitting?
The phrase means withdrawing extra effort rather than leaving. It went viral on TikTok in July 2022, from a video by the user @zkchillin. Gallup links it to its "not engaged" category: people who give their time, but not their energy or passion, to their work.
Is quiet quitting a trend?
The term is new, but the behaviour is not. Researchers described "neglect" as a response to job dissatisfaction in 1988. What Gallup's data shows is scale: 64% of employees worldwide and 61% in the Middle East and North Africa were not engaged in its 2026 report, the group it says is quietly quitting.
What is the difference between quiet quitting and burnout?
Burnout is a syndrome caused by chronic workplace stress that has not been managed, with exhaustion, mental distance from the job and reduced effectiveness. Quiet quitting is a choice to do only the minimum, and the person may not be exhausted at all. If someone is depleted, treat it as burnout first.
How do you deal with quiet quitting employees?
Start with a private conversation about what changed, not a warning. Make expectations clear, keep the promises you make, recognise good work specifically, and hold a short, regular one-to-one. Performance processes rarely help, because the person is meeting the minimum the job requires.
Sources
- Gallup (2026), State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report, Gallup, Inc. gallup.com
- Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: global data". gallup.com
- Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: regional data" (Middle East and North Africa). gallup.com
- Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: country-level data" for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. gallup.com/egypt, gallup.com/saudi-arabia, gallup.com/uae
- Harter, J. (2022, updated 2023), "Is quiet quitting real?", Gallup, 6 September 2022. gallup.com
- Kilpatrick, A. (2022), "What is 'quiet quitting,' and how it may be a misnomer for setting boundaries at work", NPR, 19 August 2022, republished by Connecticut Public. ctpublic.org
- Gray, T. W., Zabinski, A. M., Fu, S. and Darden, T. (2025), "That's not what I was promised! Psychological contracts and quiet quitting", Human Resource Management 64(6), 1833-1863. doi.org/10.1002/hrm.70011
- Zhao, H., Wayne, S. J., Glibkowski, B. C. and Bravo, J. (2007), "The impact of psychological contract breach on work-related outcomes: a meta-analysis", Personnel Psychology 60(3), 647-680. doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00087.x
- Rusbult, C. E., Farrell, D., Rogers, G. and Mainous, A. G. (1988), "Impact of exchange variables on exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect: an integrative model of responses to declining job status satisfaction", Academy of Management Journal 31(3), 599-627. doi.org/10.2307/256461
- Bruning, P. F. and Campion, M. A. (2018), "A role-resource approach-avoidance model of job crafting: a multimethod integration and extension of job crafting theory", Academy of Management Journal 61(2), 499-522. doi.org/10.5465/amj.2015.0604
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2020), Are Generational Categories Meaningful Distinctions for Workforce Management?, The National Academies Press. nationalacademies.org
- Fleming, W. (2024), "Employee well-being outcomes from individual-level mental health interventions: cross-sectional evidence from the United Kingdom", Industrial Relations Journal 55(2), 162-182. doi.org/10.1111/irj.12418
- Zenger, J. and Folkman, J. (2022), "Quiet quitting is about bad bosses, not bad employees", Harvard Business Review, 31 August 2022, as summarised in Advisory Board, "Are your staff 'quiet quitting?' You need to build a better relationship with them", 6 September 2022. advisory.com
- Yi, R. (2024), "Employee retention depends on getting recognition right", Gallup, 18 September 2024. gallup.com
- World Health Organization (2019), "Burn-out an 'occupational phenomenon': International Classification of Diseases", 28 May 2019. who.int
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