One in five employees globally are ‘loud quitting' and workers' stress levels are at record high, finds survey

After quiet quitting made headlines last year with employees prioritising boundaries by not going above and beyond at their jobs, another workplace trend “loud quitting” is making waves this time and is probably worse than the former.

Nearly one in five, or 18 percent, of global employees are loudly quitting or actively disengaged, according to a new report from Gallup which surveyed more than 120,000 global employees in 2022.

While during the quiet quitting trend, people chose to not give in to the hustle culture, with this new trend some workers are no longer keeping discontentment on the down-low — instead, they are engaging in “loud quitting.”

The consulting company Gallup defined loud quitters as employees who take actions that “directly harm” the organisation, while undercutting its goals and opposing its leaders.

“At some point along the way, the trust between employee and employer was severely broken,” said the report. “Or the employee has been woefully mismatched to a role, causing constant crises.”

Meanwhile, nearly six in 10 employees fell into the category of quiet quitting. When combined with actively disengaged employees, low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion dollars, or 9 percent of global GDP, according to the report.

With the majority of the world’s employees engaging in quiet quitting (59 percent) — only 23 percent of survey respondents consider themselves to be thriving or engaged at work.

According to Gallup, for leaders and managers, loud quitting can signal major risks within an organisation that are important not to ignore.

“Conversely, quiet quitters are often your greatest opportunity for growth and change. They are waiting for a leader or a manager to have a conversation with them, encourage them, inspire them. A few changes to how they are managed could turn them into productive team members,” it said.

After dropping in 2020 during the pandemic, employee engagement is on the rise again, reaching a record-high 23 percent in 2022, the report said. This means more workers found their work meaningful and felt connected to their team, manager and employer. That's good news for global productivity and GDP growth.

However, the report also points out that although the world has recovered from the worst of the pandemic, employee stress remained at a record-high level.

Forty-four percent of employees said they experienced a lot of stress the previous day, repeating the record high in 2021 and continuing a trend of elevated stress that began almost a decade earlier.

A survey respondent from Nigeria quoted in the report said, “ By the time I’m done with work, I’m so exhausted that some days I don’t have the energy to hold a conversation. So, over time, I’ve had family