What Is Loud Quitting and How Should Managers Respond?

Loud quitting is one of the most visible signs of disengagement in the workplace. Loud quitters actively show their frustration by openly criticising management, posting negative comments online, or deliberately underperforming. It’s the opposite of quiet quitting, where employees silently disengage.

For managers, loud quitting creates serious risks to morale, team stability and company reputation. And without the right skills, these situations are difficult to defuse.

Quit quitting at a glance:

Definition: When employees make their frustration known. They don’t hide it.

• The Risk: It kills morale, spreads negativity, and can quickly damage your reputation.
• The Cause: Usually poor leadership, lack of recognition, or problems left to fester.
• The Signs: Public complaints, online digs, and performance that starts to slip.
• The Fix: Catch it early. Talk openly. Rebuild trust.
• The Solution: Equip your managers to handle conflict and bring people back onside.

That is why management training plays such an important role. It helps managers spot the warning signs early, step in confidently, and stop issues before they spread across the team. Let’s take a closer look at this interesting topic.

Loud Quitting Meaning

Loud quitting is the brash cousin of quiet quitting, a recent viral phenomenon that involves doing the bare minimum at work without alerting management of your disengagement or apathy.

Unlike quiet quitters, loud quitters aren’t afraid of making their dissatisfaction clear. While they may not have handed in their notice just yet, loud quitters have typically mentally checked out of their roles. As such, they feel they have nothing to lose when it comes to disrupting workflows and upsetting colleagues.

For example, a loud quitter may aggressively challenge senior leaders during team meetings, speak negatively about the business to customers, talk openly about looking for new positions, and encourage other employees to follow their lead.

It goes without saying that loud quitters tend to underperform and may actively harm business outcomes. In serious cases, loud quitters may influence the opinions of their colleagues and instil widespread discontentment and anger among your teams.

Loud Quitting Explained

While loud quitting may sound like risky or rude behaviour, it’s more common than you might think. Recent stats suggest that up to one in five employees are engaged in loud quitting, while some journalists have identified loud quitting as the latest trend to follow its quieter version.

With disengagement on the rise and over 50% of employees considering leaving their jobs due to burnout and poor management, there’s never been a more crucial time for leaders to watch out for the signs of loud quitting.

Remember, loud quitters aren’t being uncooperative for the sake of it. Most have legitimate concerns that require addressing before they become an obvious problem with knock-on effects. In many cases, loud quitting represents the last resort of an employee who feels sidelined and overlooked by managers and team leaders.

Quiet Quitting vs Loud Quitting

Quiet quitting and loud quitting come from the same place, frustration and disengagement!

The difference is in how employees show it. Quiet quitters withdraw silently. Loud quitters make noise and want everyone to know they’re unhappy.

Managers need to spot both early on because one chips away at performance, the other explodes into a team issue.

The Warning Signs of Loud Quitting

Loud quitting doesn’t happen spontaneously. Most people experience several months or even years of poor management and unhappy work lives before they start to make a noise. As such, it’s important to look out for the symptoms in their early stages before they become a big issue. Here are some key traits to look out for:

Open Criticism of Managers or Company

Most employees are wary of criticising their managers or company as they may worry about jeopardising their career prospects. When employees are disengaged from their roles, however, they may feel empowered to undermine leadership and question decisions in rude or disruptive ways.

Typically, these kinds of comments will build in frequency and severity as loud quitters become more unhappy with their roles. If you start to notice off-colour comments or more combative discussion styles from certain employees, it’s worth checking in with them before the situation escalates.

Deliberate Mistakes or Poor Work

Employees may sabotage their companies by submitting poor work or making deliberate and harmful mistakes. While innocent mistakes happen, loud quitters won’t tend to apologise for their mistakes or try to rectify any problems.

Obviously, this form of loud quitting can have serious consequences for your business, especially if they’re submitting work to paying clients or looking after customer data. If you start to notice an employee’s performance sliding, an open and empathetic performance review can nip things in the bud before their behaviour becomes a real issue.

Negative Comments on Social Media

While social media has countless benefits for modern businesses, it comes with a few significant dangers. A loud quitter can voice their rage and annoyance with just a couple of simple clicks, potentially wreaking havoc with a company’s internal branding and their public image and branding.

Some employees will have more significant follower counts than others, and a popular and charismatic poster has the power to harm your reputation within a matter of minutes. While you can try to mitigate this prospect by asking employees to stick to social media guidelines and policies, a loud quitter is often ready to disregard the rules and accept any negative consequences.

If you want to catch the problem before it causes a major public relations crisis, it’s worth monitoring activity on sites such as LinkedIn. With around 44.6 million UK workers signed up to the site, many of your employees are likely to be posting about their professional opinions and sharing resources with people in their networks. Look out for minor slights and criticisms against your company or management team, as this could indicate a problem brewing.

Of course, employees have a right to privacy, and you shouldn’t engage in overly stringent surveillance. Rather, keep an eye on your LinkedIn feed and monitor the general sentiment among your workforce.

Side note here… as well as catching signs of discontentment, this strategy could help you discover employee achievements that may otherwise have gone under the radar. Celebrating such achievements will boost morale and could prevent disengagement and disruptive behaviour.

Why Loud Quitting Happens

It’s easy for managers to blame loud quitting on the personality faults of a vocal few. However, a little empathy will tell you that the reality is a lot more complex. Here are just a few factors on which to reflect if you find yourself handling loud quitters…

Frustration with Leadership

As a business leader, it’s easy to become preoccupied with innovative growth strategies, budgetary planning, and maintaining an advantage over competitors. However, focusing too heavily on the future of your business can lead to neglect of your current employees.

While the senior management will have the final say on critical business decisions, employees value having some kind of influence over the trajectory of the organisation. Recent stats show that only 61% of employees believe their senior managers make a genuine effort to listen to staff concerns, meaning many workers feel voiceless when it comes to organisational decisions that could affect their lives. This voicelessness could quickly lead to feelings of frustration and annoyance with senior leadership.

Another cause for frustration could be a lack of clear and consistent communication. Sending contradictory emails or failing to loop employees in on new schemes or strategies could create a lack of trust towards managers, ultimately stoking the fires that lead to loud quitting.

Lack of Recognition or Development

Employees who feel undervalued and overlooked may begin to act out.

After all, what’s the point of producing high-quality work if there’s nothing in it for you?

Unfortunately, there appears to be a perception gap between employees and managers when it comes to recognition and development. One survey suggests that while over 80% of managers believe they’re providing sufficient recognition for excellent work, only 40% of employees agree.

So, while you may think you’re rewarding good work in an appropriate manner, some employees may still feel overlooked and ignored. When employees feel neglected in this way, they may feel stuck in their careers and start looking around for jobs with more growth opportunities.

Some may resort to loud quitting if they want to gain attention, even if for the wrong reasons.

Build-Up of Unresolved Issues

Failure to resolve issues can lead to a pile-up of problems that culminate in loud quitting.

Just because an employee stops mentioning an unresolved problem doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about it. Rather, the issue could be festering in their mind and contributing to a growing list of grievances that increase the risk of loud quitting.

To avoid this problem, leaders would do well to solve issues as soon as they arise using a comprehensive solutions process.

Interpersonal conflict between colleagues represents one of the most common reasons for workplace resentment, an issue that takes a great deal of sensitivity and empathy to resolve. Unfortunately, the complexity of the issue means that only around a third of employees who have experienced conflict report a satisfying resolution. As such, many businesses risk creating an environment for loud quitting.

The Impact of Loud Quitting on Teams

Loud quitting doesn’t just impact managers and organisational productivity. Often, loud quitting is designed to influence other team members and sow seeds of doubt regarding the capability of senior managers.

Damages Team Morale

Witnessing a team member disengage and engage in open conflict with managers and colleagues can dent team morale and lower collective motivation. It’s difficult to stay enthusiastic about a project or strategy when others are vocally criticising its foundations.

It’s also very challenging to work alongside someone who is unhappy and disengaged. Team members may feel as if they’re walking on eggshells or wonder whether to align their sympathies with managers or the loud quitter. In some cases, divisions may start to arise within the team based on allegiances and beliefs.

Creates Fear Among Other Staff

If you fail to act on loud quitting, staff members may start to worry about the security of their position. Such a dynamic suggests that the relationship between managers and employees has broken down, potentially leaving employees at risk if they step out of line or fail to live up to expectations. Employees may worry about speaking up or making mistakes, creating a general atmosphere of fear that may catalyse the rate at which employees quit their roles and search for brighter prospects.

Spreads Negativity Across the Business

Negativity can spread quickly. Once you have one loud quitter on your hands, you may soon find yourself with an entire team of unhappy colleagues primed to voice their displeasure and wreak havoc with your workflows.

When loud quitting becomes infectious, your organisation may develop a so-called “toxic workplace culture”, a kind of systematic negativity characterised by a range of unpleasant phenomena, including harassment, lack of common courtesy between colleagues, dysfunctional work patterns, unfair distribution of responsibilities, colleague rivalries, and more. A massive three-quarters of the UK workforce claims to have experienced a toxic workplace culture, suggesting it’s an all-too-easy trap to fall into.

Over time, workplace toxicity can cause serious mental health issues, including anxiety and depression, as well as boosting resignation rates. As such, it’s imperative that managers nurture a kind and welcoming company culture before things get out of hand.

Hurts Company Reputation Externally

It usually doesn’t take long for the rumour mill to start spreading news of discontent among your employees, especially if social media is involved. As knowledge of your loud quitting problem grows, more people will start to question your company’s integrity.

In the long term, this could lead to reduced willingness to work with or purchase goods from your company, problems hiring new talent, and even legal issues that could cost significant sums of money. Clawing back brand trust takes significant time and effort, with some companies buckling under the pressure.

How to Prevent Loud Quitting

If you’re feeling a little gloomy about the prospect of loud quitting, don’t fret. With the right management strategies and sensitive negotiation approaches, you can prevent employees from boiling over in the first place. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Have Ongoing Honest Conversations

Regular check-ins and professional development reviews can foster open dialogue about employees’ experiences at your organisation. Rather than focusing on performance alone, you should devise a two-way conversation that tells you how the employee wants to progress in their career, how you can support their goals, and whether there are any issues that require ironing out within the company. Aim for mature, informal conversations in which employees feel comfortable to speak up about any concerns, and remember to schedule regular one-to-one meetings so you can catch up on progress and make adjustments accordingly.

Deal with Problems Early

Don’t leave issues to fester – even minor grievances can escalate into major formal complaints if you’re not careful. If an employee comes to you with a problem, don’t hesitate to take some time to talk it through properly. You should also keep notes and save any relevant emails so you can refer to previous conversations if necessary. This material will help you generate the best solutions after meetings have wrapped up.

Support Line Managers with Proper Training

You can’t expect line managers to handle disengaged or disruptive behaviour without prior training, especially if they’re newly promoted. Handling sensitive conversations requires high-level skills that most people need to hone. Fortunately, leadership training courses and coaching skills assessments such as those offered by MTD Training can quickly bring managers up to speed.

The Link Between Engagement and Loud Quitting

Many people believe loud quitting stems from an aggressive or disagreeable personality type. However, this conception overlooks many of the legitimate issues employees experience, especially around disengagement.

The overwhelming majority of people want to feel engaged and fulfilled in their work, safe in the knowledge that they’re making a positive difference in the world while receiving fair recompense. Sadly, however, only 21% of employees feel engaged worldwide, meaning the vast majority aren’t especially enthused about the prospect of turning up to work.

When disengagement becomes chronic and managers do little to address the situation, loud quitting may feel like the only solution. Being able to spot the following signs could help you prevent any significant blow-ups.

Low Engagement Is the First Warning Sign

Disengagement tends to creep into the workplace slowly, with many employees unaware of the issue until it becomes persistent and affects their mental health. Early warning signs include:

• A gradual decline in work quality or productivity. Workers may take several days to reply to a simple email or show less attention to detail in their work.
• Reduced willingness to use their initiative or volunteer themselves for optional tasks.
• Minimal interest in trying out new opportunities or enrolling in professional development opportunities.
• A propensity to shy away from feedback. When they do receive feedback, they may ignore constructive feedback or actively push back against helpful suggestions.
• Reduced communication with colleagues and senior leaders.
• Less willingness to participate in meetings.
• An increasing number of sick days or leaving the office early.
• Physical withdrawal from colleagues, with a less friendly posture and lack of eye contact. They may avoid casual conversation with colleagues altogether.
• Clock-watching behaviour.
• Resistance to going above and beyond in their role.

Disengaged Staff Become Louder Over Time

Ignoring or downplaying any of the aforementioned symptoms won’t solve anything. Instead, you can expect them to get worse over time, building into active disruptions that upset everyone in the organisation.

Building Engagement Prevents Loud Quitting

The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way. Recognising employees for their talents, spending time on career development, and facilitating respectful and productive communication between colleagues will help your business go from strength to strength. If you’re keen to boost engagement among all employees, here are a few places to start:

• Invite honest feedback through employee surveys and regular one-to-ones.
• Give employees autonomy by avoiding micromanaging and permitting flexibility in how things get done.
• Give employees ownership over certain projects.
• Invest in professional development programmes, such as workshops, courses, and mentorship opportunities.
• Foster authentic team interactions by building a friendly company culture.
• Actively encourage work-life balance through flexible hours and remote working arrangements.
• Lead by example, consciously practising positivity and empathy to encourage team members to adopt such behaviours.
• Support line managers with leadership training courses, such as those offered by MTD Training.

Final Thoughts: Loud Quitting and the Damage It Causes

Loud quitting is a real danger for modern companies, threatening to spread throughout the workforce and setting off a cascade of effects, including resignations, reputational damage, lowered productivity, decreased revenues, and much more.

Fortunately, equipping managers with the tools to act early and maintain team morale can easily prevent the disastrous fallout of loud quitting. Investing in MTD’s Management Skills Training or sending managers on a Leadership Training Course could make the difference between an unhappy employee and a thriving professional.

We also encourage you to try our coaching skills assessment to identify core skills gaps and prepare leaders to take on every challenge. Whether you need help defusing tensions, delivering feedback, or reengaging bored employees, offerings such as our Management Development Programme are designed to suit your individual needs and business requirements.

To find out more, don’t hesitate to make an enquiry today! Our friendly team is on-hand to discuss your needs and generate a free, no-obligation quote.

Written by Sean McPheat

CEO of MTD Training and Amazon bestselling author. Sean writes about leadership, business, and personal growth, drawing on 20+ years of experience helping over 9,000 companies improve performance.

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