7 Signs Your Employee Is Going to Quit

31 October 2019
The indifferent guy is watching his laptop, representing an employee who is going to quit
Estimated Read Time 4 minute read

Employer turnover is one of the major issues in today’s business world. Losing employees can cost a company a lot and have a profound effect on the company’s culture. But how can you tell when your employees decide to leave? According to the research conducted by Harvard Business Review, there are many signs and indicators that your employees are unsatisfied and are planning to quit their jobs. In today’s article, we are going to present some of them.

1. Poor Performance

You can easily notice if some of your employees’ performance is bad. If your employees are responsible, reliable and always produce good work, you know they are performing well. However, if their performance suddenly changes and they start delivering bad results, you know that this is one of the signs employee is quitting. In such a scenario, you need to prepare yourself for a discussion with your employee and try to figure out what things bother them and cause their unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

2. Mood Swings

If your employees start acting differently, there might be some reason for concern. For instance, if they begin keeping to themselves more and more often, or having lunch with colleagues they otherwise haven’t spent much time with, they might be pulling away from work. This means that they are maybe discussing their plans to move on.

3. Lack of Participation in Meetings

If you notice that your employee does not show much interest in topics you discuss on meetings, this may indicate that that person is planning to leave. Maybe this person used to provide great insights, and ideas and has suddenly stopped doing that. It may be that he or she is experiencing some personal, family crises, but you never know if those are the signs employee is quitting or not until you talk to them.

4. Irregular Work Schedule

When an employee comes to work late and leaves early, this might be a sign that he or she is no longer motivated to bring value to the company. Also, if your employee starts asking for day-off more frequently than usual, you can start expecting that he or she wants to use up their holiday days and move on.

5. Lowered Productivity

If your employee stops providing reports on time or their sales have dramatically fallen, this might be a strong indicator that something might be going on. If your employees seem to show lower productivity, this might be a result of “presenteeism” – a state when your employees show up at work without actually being present. This kind of state is one of the signs your best employee is going to quit.

6. Unsatisfactory Happiness Survey Results

One of the ways to keep track of how your employees feel and what they think and at any given moment is to ask them to do regular happiness at work surveys. This might provide you with valuable insight into how happy they are at work, and whether they plan to leave the company or not. For instance, if you notice that your top-performing employees don’t even want to do the survey, or respond ambiguously to some of the survey questions ( like “I can’t answer this question”), this might be one of the signs your best employee is going to quit.

7. Lower Responsiveness

In most cases, when your employee is thinking about quitting, he or she will stop answering your emails or even answering phone calls. Generally, they will start communicating less often because they want to be less accessible so they don’t have to answer any questions that might jeopardize their job before they decide to leave.


Being aware of the signs your best employee is going to quit could help you tremendously in recognising when your employees are going to hit the road. However, gaining this information is only the first step. What you need to do is use that information and make any necessary changes to retain your employees.


This is where HeartCount steps in! HeartCount is an software that lets you measure the happiness of your employees and always know how your employees feel and what they think in real time. In this way, you will be able to react on time and encourage your employees to stay and thrive in your company culture.

Leverage HeartCount to get a pulse of your team happiness and help your employees grow!

To find out more about how HeartCount can help you build a culture of happy employees, feel free to contact us. We’ll be more than happy to help!