Working through the pandemic may also have caused a spike in employee disengagement, fuelling the quiet-quitting phenomenon. Jim Harter, chief scientist for workplace management and wellbeing at analytics firm Gallup, based in Nebraska, US, believes the trend is largely being driven by early-career employees. “Younger workers typically tend to report higher levels of engagement, but that's now declining,” he explains. “Following Covid-19, they may now have a higher bar than older generations when it comes to working for an organisation with purpose.”