April 21, 2025 – 7 min read
Long-term employees are often the pillars of institutional knowledge and day-to-day stability. They know the history, the systems, the unwritten rules. But what happens when those once-motivated team members start to check out? When the passion fades and the performance plateaus, organizations can feel the ripple effects in everything from culture to customer experience.
It’s a growing trend across industries—and it has a name: quiet quitting.
When long-term employees begin to quietly quit, their expertise may remain, but their enthusiasm doesn’t. They stop innovating, stop stretching, and, perhaps most damagingly, stop modeling excellence for others. Yet their history and tenure often shield them from the honest conversations and coaching they need to reengage.
This is where strong leadership must step in. Engaging employees isn’t just about retention. Leaders need to continually help their members grow individually and as part of the team. That means recognizing where each team member stands in terms of performance in their aptitude (skills and knowledge) and attitude (mindset, motivation, and behavior) and then finding meaningful ways to improve both.
The good news? There are powerful coaching strategies and tools leaders can use to identify quiet quitting, reignite the spark, and help long-term employees reconnect to their purpose and potential.
Unlike newer team members who are long on attitude but perhaps a little short on aptitude, tenured employees often carry the weight of past organizational changes, leadership turnover, or strategic pivots that never quite delivered. Disengagement doesn’t always look like underperformance—it can look like coasting, quiet resistance, or subtle withdrawal from collaboration.
Common warning signs include:
In high-performing teams, disengagement from even one long-term employee can drag down morale, frustrate emerging leaders, and undermine a culture of accountability.
In pharmaceutical sales, medical affairs, and market access roles, deep expertise is both an asset and a risk. Over time, a long-term employee can become so embedded in legacy thinking or outdated processes that they become resistant to change—not because they lack capacity, but because they lack curiosity or incentive.
Further, promotions may seem scarce or out of reach, role evolution may be slow, and many employees may feel like they’ve “topped out.” Add in increasing regulatory constraints, changes in technology, and shifting healthcare expectations, and it’s easy to see how someone with 15–20 years of service might start to mentally check out—even while technically performing the role.
Organizations often assume that long-term employees, by default, are delivering high value. But that’s not always true. The cost of quiet quitting—especially from someone in a critical customer-facing role—can be massive.
A recent McKinsey study found that more than half of employees in large organizations were disengaged. Around 10% could be categorized as “quitters”—those who had already decided to leave. However, another 43% exhibited low satisfaction and commitment: 11% were “disruptors”— actively disengaged and likely to demoralize others—and a further 32% were “mildly disengaged”—fulfilling minimum job requirements but no more.
Hidden Costs include:
Perhaps most damaging is when these employees are held up as examples of what “experience” looks like, unintentionally signaling to others that excellence has an expiration date.
One reason quiet quitting among long-term employees goes unaddressed is leadership discomfort. Many managers struggle with coaching these individuals because of long-held relationships, past successes, or fear of confrontation.
Here are five common leadership biases that keep disengagement in place:
Recognizing and naming leadership biases is step one. Coaching can’t begin unless leaders are willing to examine their own filters first.
Coaching long-term employees requires nuance. You must honor their contributions while making it clear that experience alone isn’t enough. What matters now is engagement, relevance, and contribution to today’s priorities.
Here are tips on how to do that:
The tone here is not corrective—it’s collaborative. You’re inviting them to shape the next chapter of their journey, not just survive it.
Coaching is critical—but it’s not enough on its own. Organizations must also create the culture that supports engagement and growth across all stages of an employee’s career.
Consider these structural shifts:
Ultimately, the goal is to create a culture that values both experience and evolution.
Despite thoughtful coaching and structural support, the spark may not always return. In these cases, leaders must make tough but respectful decisions: transition someone into a different role, redesign their responsibilities, or part ways.
This isn’t punitive—it’s protective. It safeguards the health of the broader team and ensures that disengagement doesn’t become systemic.
Long-term employees can be among the most powerful assets in a life sciences organization—but only when they’re engaged, challenged, and growing. Letting quiet quitting slide isn’t loyalty—it’s avoidance.
Reengaging these employees is not about going backward—it’s about helping them imagine what forward looks like again. The companies that thrive are those that expect—and support—meaningful contribution at every stage of the employee lifecycle.
Sean Frontz, Global Practice Leader at PDG, shares insights on will take info from performance minute when available.
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