62%
of employees globally are 'not engaged' — present, going through the motions. Quiet quitting.
Gallup · State of the Global Workplace 2025
19%
India employee engagement rate in 2025. The 62% globally becomes ~79% in India.
ADP Research · People at Work 2025
$438B
Lost to disengagement in 2024 globally. The quiet quitters are not invisible — they are expensive.
Gallup · State of the Global Workplace 2025
Quiet quitting is not about employees doing less. It is about them deciding not to do more. Here is what the data says is driving India's quiet quitting wave — and why your annual engagement survey will not catch it.
What Quiet Quitting Actually Is
The term 'quiet quitting' went mainstream in 2022, but the phenomenon it describes has always existed. Gallup's taxonomy is more useful: 62% of the global workforce is 'not engaged' — they are present, they complete their assigned tasks, but they bring no discretionary effort, no innovation, no genuine investment in outcomes.
They are not unhappy enough to leave (yet). They are not satisfied enough to care. They are somewhere in the middle — doing exactly what is required, watching the clock, and updating their LinkedIn profile when a good opportunity surfaces.
In India, the situation is acute. ADP Research's 2025 data shows only 19% of Indian employees are engaged — meaning the quiet quitting pool in India is closer to 79% than the global 62%.
The problem with quiet quitting is that it is invisible on a P&L until it is catastrophic. The disengaged employee who leaves is a crisis. The one who stays and quietly reduces output by 30% for two years is a far larger cost — and nobody flags it.
Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2025
Why Your Annual Survey Won't Catch It
Most Indian organisations measure engagement once a year, often through a survey that asks whether employees feel valued, whether they understand the company's goals, and whether they would recommend the company as a place to work.
The problem: quiet quitters know what answers to give. A person who has mentally checked out but has not yet decided to leave will often score their engagement at 6 or 7 out of 10 — above the 'concern threshold', below the 'engaged' threshold. They are invisible in the data.
What actually reveals quiet quitting: cross-team collaboration frequency, voluntary contributions beyond role scope, peer recognition given and received, participation rates in optional activities, and 90-day attrition following team disruption events.
What Drives It — and What Fixes It
What drives quiet quitting
Poor manager relationship (70% of engagement variance sits with the manager — Gallup). Lack of career visibility. Feeling like a unit of production rather than a person. Absence of genuine team connection.
What fixes it (with evidence)
Strong team culture (employees with workplace friends are 7× more likely to be engaged — TINYpulse). Visible recognition (45% less likely to leave — Vantage Circle). Recurring shared experiences that create genuine investment.
The Connection Between Quiet Quitting and Sport
The research on quiet quitting and the research on sport-based engagement point to the same root cause and the same solution. Quiet quitting is a disconnection problem — employees who feel no real bond to their team or organisation have no motivation to go beyond the minimum.
Sport creates exactly the conditions that reverse disconnection: genuine stakes, shared outcomes, cross-hierarchy interaction, visible individual contribution, and the kind of memories that give people an identity within their team beyond their job title.
FORJ's 90-day attrition data shows a consistent -18% delta after events. The mechanism is not magic — it is that people who have played together, won together, and lost together are meaningfully harder to poach with a slightly better offer from a company they know nothing about.
What the data shows across FORJ events
-18%
Attrition delta · 12 months post-event
FORJ internal · 50+ events
NPS 78
Avg participant NPS
Industry benchmark: 34
94%
Rebook intent · 6 months post-event
FORJ post-event surveys
50+
Corporate events across India
Delhi-NCR · Bangalore
From disengaged to invested
Build the team culture that makes quiet quitting rare.
We design recurring sport-based programmes that create the belonging, recognition, and shared stakes that keep people genuinely invested.