On the Edge: How to Notice in Time That an Employee Wants to Quit

Just yesterday, the person was working as usual, planning to build a brilliant career specifically at the company and happily taking on any work opportunities with a smile, and today they are already handing in a resignation letter "of their own accord." But is that really true? Does it really happen that someone quits without any preliminary symptoms at all? We do not want to disappoint you, but no. That does not happen - unless, of course, we are talking about an intern or a newcomer rather than the kind of employee you want to hold on to: responsible, steady, and someone who has been with the company for what feels like ages. For people like that, there is almost always a long pause lasting months between the internal decision of "I can't do this anymore" and the actual departure. The only problem is that very few people notice those signs - and the employer certainly does not.

Why Employees Leave in the First Place - and Who Is at Risk

According to Gallup, 42% of employees who voluntarily left their jobs believe that their manager or company could have done something to prevent the resignation. And according to SHRM, employees leave not only, and not even primarily, because of money, but because of other reasons too, such as a toxic team or incompetent leadership. In fact, 32.4% of respondents named a toxic environment as the main reason for leaving, and 30.3% pointed to poor management.

In other words, people rarely quit "for no reason." Usually, it is not one major event either, but rather a cumulative effect triggered by several resignation-driving factors at once. This means that if you want to reduce staff turnover and keep your most effective employees engaged, you need to identify these factors in time - or, better yet, prevent them from appearing in the first place. Such "resignation factors" include the following things:

• the workload has long since become constant: the person is always working in emergency mode and has no time to recover;

• the manager assigns tasks but provides no clarity: priorities keep changing, expectations are blurred, feedback comes too late;

• the employee's contribution is taken for granted: results go unnoticed, efforts are not recognized;

• the work has stopped offering growth: there are no new tasks or prospects, development has stalled;

• there is too much chaos in the team: roles are blurred, deadlines are constantly on fire, processes are held together through manual management;

• the person has been working "for two" for too long (for example, when a colleague quit and you take too long to find a replacement);

• the employee does not feel they have any impact on the result and does not understand the meaning of their work;

• tension is building inside the team, and difficult conversations are constantly being postponed;

• the rules seem unfair: workload, bonuses, and opportunities are distributed unevenly;

• the employee has no sense of stability: tasks and expectations change far too often;

• the job starts taking over too much of their personal life: overtime, evening messages, ruined time off;

• the person stops feeling like part of the team and increasingly works "alone."

If we are talking about who is at risk, there are no professions that can confidently be called the "most problematic." However, people resign much more often in systems where several factors overlap at once: high workload, weak management, little recognition, unclear rules of the game, and a lack of professional satisfaction with the results and with their own achievements. Undoubtedly, a lot also depends on the person's temperament, goals, expectations, and values. That is exactly why the same specialist may burn out in six months at one company, while at another they may work calmly and grow for several years.

What Signs Show That an Employee Is Close to Quitting

The most important thing you need to do to prevent a resignation is to look for changes in habitual behavior. Not the fact that a person was tired once or snapped once. But the fact that their pattern has changed: before, it was one way - now, it is different.

1. The employee has stopped being proactive

This is one of the most noticeable signals. The person continues doing tasks, but stops suggesting ideas, stops taking on extra pieces of work, stops asking clarifying questions, stops arguing constructively on the substance of things, and stops showing interest in what is happening beyond the boundaries of their own area. From the outside, this can even look convenient: "they calmed down," "they stopped arguing," "they just started doing the work." But very often this is not maturity and not calmness - it is an internal step backward. The person is no longer investing anything beyond the minimum because they have stopped seeing the point in it.

What this looks like in practice:

• an editor who used to suggest topics and argue for the quality of a text now simply writes silently according to briefs that they previously called "stupid";

• an analyst who used to bring forward hypotheses on their own is now limited only to what they have been asked for;

• a manager who used to carry half the team on their shoulders stops taking on anything beyond their direct responsibilities.

2. Deadlines, quality, or attention to detail have started to slip

Now this is exactly the kind of thing an employer sees very clearly. It does not necessarily mean a dramatic collapse in KPIs. Sometimes small but systemic failures appear first: the person replies later, forgets agreements more often, delivers less polished work, misses details they previously handled effortlessly. Keep in mind that a one-off mistake says nothing by itself. But if an organized and reliable employee suddenly starts "falling apart" regularly on simple things, that is something entirely different.

What this looks like in practice:

• an account manager who always used to warn clients in advance about risks has, for several weeks in a row, remembered the problem only at the very last moment;

• a designer who usually delivered clean layouts increasingly brings unfinished versions;

• a support specialist responds with templates and is clearly not reading requests through to the end.

3. The person has started arriving late more often, canceling meetings, taking sick days, or sudden days off

This is already a very down-to-earth and visible marker. Of course, everyone has personal circumstances from time to time. But if an employee's rhythm of presence changes - lateness becomes more frequent, meetings are moved, there are sudden "oops, my cat is giving birth, I need to log off," short sick leaves, regular disappearances from processes - then this behavior is worth looking at more closely if it continues for longer than a month. Because often this is not "sloppiness," but the only way the person can keep enduring their job without quitting it yet (although soon even that will no longer be enough).

What this looks like in practice:

• a strong project manager who always used to be the first to arrive at status meetings has, for the last month and a half, been consistently late, moved syncs around, and taken several days off "just to catch a breath";

• a marketer who never used to fall out of rhythm suddenly starts getting sick frequently after especially difficult weeks.

4. The employee is distancing themselves from the team

This is also a very noticeable thing - if you do not ignore it. The person gets involved less in general discussions, does not support team initiatives, speaks only minimally in meetings, avoids extra contact, and no longer shows interest in what is happening around them. This does not mean that every introvert is on the verge of quitting. Again, the point is the dynamic: if the employee used to be sociable and engaged in the life of the team, but has now suddenly become withdrawn and answers every question in monosyllables while limiting themselves strictly to work topics, that is an alarming signal.

What this looks like in practice:

• a group lead who used to actively participate in discussing shared decisions now hardly speaks at all in all-team meetings and turns their camera off at the first opportunity;

• a person who used to help newcomers stops engaging in colleagues' onboarding altogether.

5. They have stopped planning their career

As long as an employee still sees themselves tied to the company, they are usually willing to get involved in things with a future horizon: a new process, a long-term project, training, mentoring, launching a new direction, participating in change. When the internal decision to leave is maturing, the person intuitively begins avoiding everything that ties them to the company's future.

What this looks like in practice:

• the employee suddenly refuses to take part in a project that stretches six months ahead;

• they do not want to take on an intern or a new hire for onboarding;

• they lose interest in training, development, and new areas of responsibility;

• when asked "where do you want to grow next?" they answer evasively or do not answer at all.

6. The person has become more irritable or, on the contrary, apathetic

Both extremes matter. One employee, against the background of burnout, becomes nervous: they react more sharply to small things, argue more often, and lose their temper quickly. Another, on the contrary, seems to fade out: they stop reacting emotionally at all, take everything with the same flatness, without interest and without inner involvement. Both can be a sign not of personality, but of accumulated overload - if they appear suddenly.

What this looks like in practice:

• a calm senior specialist who previously handled difficult discussions in a very collected way begins answering ordinary questions sharply;

• an engaged manager who used to care deeply about results and whose evaluation people once feared now reacts to everything in a "well, okay" kind of way.

What to Do If You Notice These Signals

This is where employers often make two mistakes. The first is ignoring the changes until it is too late. The second is trying to "save" the person through concessions: promising growth, money, a revised role - anything to make them stay. But if an employee has been building up the decision to leave for a long time, this kind of emergency resuscitation will not work, or it will work only temporarily. Because, as we have already discussed, the reasons for resignation are never just one thing - there are several of them, they are embedded in the work process itself, and they tend to accumulate. When a person is bothered by only one issue (for example, a low salary), they will first go to the employer themselves and talk one-on-one, rather than immediately submitting a resignation. A resignation letter is a desperate measure taken when other attempts have not helped, which means that by then it is already too late to do anything.

You need to act immediately, from the very first fleeting symptoms, and in that way stay ahead of the problem. There are several rules here.

1. Start not with pressure, but with a normal conversation

If you can see that a person has changed, do not immediately ask them point-blank: "So, are you planning to quit?" After a conversation like that, the employee will either shut down or start answering in the safest possible way. Better like this: "I've noticed that over the past few weeks you've been taking part less in discussions and have postponed one-to-ones several times. I want to understand what's going on and where we might be able to fix something."

It may turn out that the issue is not about you or the company at all. Perhaps it is only temporary, because the employee has personal problems that inevitably affect their emotional state and, as a result, their sociability, attentiveness, or initiative as well. However, the employee will appreciate the fact that you noticed, and you may be able to agree on a temporary reduction in workload or the removal of other aggravating factors, which will allow the person to deal with those personal issues more quickly and recover.

2. Do not argue and do not invalidate someone else's experience

One of the worst possible reactions is to start convincing the employee that they are "being too dramatic," that they are "just tired," or that "everyone is like this right now." After that, they will almost certainly fall silent completely. If the person has already accumulated irritation or fatigue, arguing with their feelings will only deepen the distance.

Bad:

• "We all have a heavy workload right now."
• "You're just burned out - take a vacation and it'll pass."
• "I don't see any reason to worry this much."

Better:

• "Where exactly has it become difficult for you?"
• "What is knocking you out of work the most right now?"
• "What in our processes or in my work as a manager is making it hard for you to carry this role normally?"

3. Look not for a "magic solution," but for the root of the problem

Retention almost never works through general measures. If a person is struggling, it is not enough to say, "We value you." You need to understand what exactly has broken. For one person, the problem is overload; for another, it is chaotic task-setting; for a third, it is the feeling of a career dead end and not understanding what to do next in this company. Until the cause is named, any solution will be merely "cosmetic."

4. Agree not on "something" and "sometime," but on concrete steps and deadlines

The weakest possible ending to such a conversation is: "Thanks for sharing, we'll think about it." After that, the person usually becomes even more convinced that nothing will change. If you have already noticed the signals and had the conversation, you need to fix what exactly will be done and within what time frame.

For example:

• redistribute part of the workload starting next week;

• remove one extra function from the role that the person has long been carrying beyond the norm;

• rebuild the one-to-one format if the employee is lacking feedback;

• agree on a role or grade review by a specific date, not "when there's an opportunity";

• bring in another manager or HR if the problem cannot be solved within the team.

The more concrete the steps, the higher the chance that the employee will believe not your words, but the changes.

5. Do not try to fix a systemic problem with one-off loyalty gestures

Sometimes the employer sees that a valuable person is on the edge and tries to retain them in a one-off way: by giving a bonus, promising vacation time, or temporarily reducing the workload. This can help - but only if the problem is truly local. If, however, the person has spent a year living in chaos, carrying someone else's work, or working with a poor manager, then a one-time act of "care" will fix nothing.

That is why after the conversation it is also important to ask yourself the following:

• is the problem only with this employee, or with the role as a whole;

• is too much resting on their patience;

• has the team started to treat something as normal that has in fact long since become unhealthy;

• is this person quietly holding together a system that really should have been fixed as a whole a long time ago.

Sometimes the best way to reduce turnover is not to retain one specific employee at any cost, but to stop pretending that the system itself is fine.

Checklist for the Employer: What to Review Before an Employee Leaves

This list is useful to pull out not on the day of resignation, but regularly - especially for key people on the team.

Check whether the employee understands:

• what is expected of them over the coming months;

• what criteria their work is being evaluated by;

• where they can grow next;

• what exactly in their contribution is valuable to the team.

Check whether they have:

• a manageable workload, rather than one that is chronically overloaded;

• normal contact with their manager;

• the feeling that they are being heard;

• space for development, not just for "closing tasks."

• And separately ask yourself:

• has this person been running too long on loyalty alone;

• have you gotten used to considering them "stable" simply because they never complain;

• are they silently compensating for the team's systemic problems.

Turnover is usually reduced by things that are far less "heroic," but much more effective:

• clear expectations;

• a reasonable workload;

• strong managers;

• regular feedback;

• recognition of contribution;

• a sense of prospects;

• respect for the person, not only for their function.

According to Gallup, employees who receive high-quality recognition are 45% less likely to leave within two years. And certainly, no employee ever leaves "suddenly." Usually, first they endure for a long time, then they get tired, then they begin to detach internally... And only at the very end, when they no longer have the strength to endure and their teeth grind from how tightly they are clenching them day after day, do they resign. That is why retention begins not on the day when the person has already put their resignation letter on the table, but much earlier: at the moment when their behavior, engagement, and attitude toward work only begin to change. And if an employer knows how to notice these signals not formally, but genuinely, they have a much greater chance not just to reduce turnover in the statistics and on paper, but to keep truly strong people - and, in addition, to improve the company's reputation and stability.