Quiet quitting and the measurement of engagement
Job satisfaction appears on 39 recent papers in the management and economics journals, employee engagement on 17, work engagement on 9 and quiet quitting on 2. Engagement surveys drive billions in consulting fees. Does measured engagement predict anything that firms can observe, such as output, errors or exits, and did it actually fall?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 88 papers carry an engagement, job-satisfaction or disengagement keyword (56 in management journals, 21 in economics): "job satisfaction" on 39, "employee engagement" on 17, "work engagement" on 9, "quiet quitting" on 2. Almost all measure engagement with surveys and relate it to other surveys.
Questions
- Does survey engagement predict later output, errors, absences and exits in administrative records, and how much of the link survives once pay and job type are controlled for?
- Did engagement fall after 2020, as the quiet-quitting story claims, in data that are not surveys, such as hours logged and voluntary tasks?
- Do engagement interventions (recognition programmes, flexibility) change behaviour or only survey answers?
Data that could help
Firms' engagement survey results linked to productivity, absence and exit records; time-use and software activity logs where available.
Next step
Partner with a firm that runs regular engagement surveys and test whether survey scores predict exits and performance ratings over the following year.