How to respond to ‘quiet cracking,’ a new workplace threat

Business leaders have always had to be attentive to small but important shifts within the workplace that may affect employee performance—troubling trends that have increased since the pandemic. Now there’s another problematic development for leaders to monitor. In addition to rising burnout, disengagement, and intentional idleness from quiet quitting, researchers have identified a new office condition they’re calling “quiet cracking.”

According to learning management system company TalentLMS, quiet cracking is situated somewhere between burnout, suffered by some ambitious but overloaded workers, and the quiet quitters who are actively slacking their way out of jobs they no longer want. Instead, people quietly cracking gradually become mired in feeling both unappreciated by managers and cl