Your turnover is down. That’s not good news.
People aren’t quitting. The quit rate is near the lowest in a decade, and nearly half of workers say they’re staying put longer than they otherwise would. But most of them aren’t staying because they want to.
There’s a name for this now: job hugging. Holding tight to a job you’ve outgrown, or never liked, because in this market the alternative feels worse. On paper it looks like loyalty. It isn’t. Loyalty is choosing to stay. This is being afraid to leave. And no metric most companies track can tell the two apart.
When someone checks out but stays, you keep paying them. Full salary, full benefits, full headcount, for a fraction of the output. Gallup puts the cost of a disengaged employee at 34% of their salary in lost productivity. On a $75,000 salary, that’s about $25,000 a year, every year, for as long as they sit there running at half speed.
That person doesn’t show up anywhere you’d look for a problem. There’s no exit interview for someone who never exits. No open req, no backfill, no alarm. They punch in, do the minimum, punch out, and the cost lands on your books as work that quietly didn’t happen.
It’s why job hugging is more expensive than turnover, not less. When someone quits, the cost is sharp and it ends. You backfill and move on. When someone stays and stops trying, the cost is quiet and it never stops. You lose a slice of them every day, and pay full freight for it.
A few years ago, unhappiness was loud. People quit, and you knew exactly where you were losing them. Now the same unhappiness is silent. The person who checked out looks identical to the person who’s thriving. Same seat, same title, tenure ticking up.
So the question worth asking isn’t what’s our turnover. It’s the one most companies can’t answer: who on this team has quietly stopped growing? Who’s coasting, who’s stuck, who was ready for more six months ago and never got asked?
Those people are still reachable. Someone coasting in a job they’ve outgrown is often someone who would re-engage in a heartbeat if they saw a path, a stretch project, a reason to lean back in. But you can only offer that to people you can actually see.
Low turnover was never the goal. Engaged people and strong teams are. And the way you build those isn’t an org chart, it’s a conversation. The leaders who come out of this ahead are the ones having the talk before it becomes an exit interview: where do you want to go, what do you want to learn, what are you good at that we’re not using? You can’t have that conversation with people you can’t see. But once you can see them, it’s the easiest one to start.
Sources
- Monster, 2025 Job Hugging Report — 48% of workers staying in roles longer than they otherwise would, driven by comfort and security. monster.com
- Gallup, State of the Global Workplace — disengaged employees cost ~34% of salary in lost productivity: 37% higher absenteeism, 18% lower productivity, 15% lower profitability. gallup.com
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS — quit rate near a decade low. bls.gov