Conscious quitting
Conscious quitting means leaving a job because the company's values or impact no longer sit right with us. The reason is what the work is for.
An engineer at an oil company takes a pay cut to join a small solar firm. Her old job was fine. She couldn't keep explaining it at dinner parties.
How it shows
At work
Following the company's news with a sinking feeling. Avoiding telling people where one works. Asking in interviews about a company's record on climate, people or ethics. Turning down a raise, or accepting it and feeling worse.
In close relationships
Talking at home about the job as something one has to justify. A partner hearing “I can't keep doing this” about the work itself, and not about the hours.
In ourselves
A sense of being a hypocrite at the desk. Relief when imagining the resignation letter, and worry about money and identity once it's real.
How it differs from similar ideas
Disengagement and quiet quitting
Disengagement is pulling effort and care back while staying, and quiet quitting is its popular name. Conscious quitting is about leaving, and the reason is the employer's values or impact.
Burnout
Burnout is exhaustion, cynicism and a falling sense of doing the job well, built up from chronic stress at work. A person can be burned out at a company they believe in, or fully rested and leaving over values. A rest may ease burnout. It leaves a values clash where it was.
Moral injury
Moral injury is the lasting harm of doing, failing to prevent or witnessing acts that break our deep moral beliefs, or of being betrayed by those in authority. It can lead to conscious quitting. Most values clashes at work are milder: a sense of being part of something one doesn't believe in, without a single act that broke anything.
What it doesn’t mean
Research hasn't studied it under this name yet. Conscious quitting is a phrase from business writing and surveys. Psychology studies nearby ideas, such as person and organization fit and moral injury, but not this phrase.
It isn't the same as quiet quitting. Quiet quitting is doing the minimum while staying. Conscious quitting is about leaving, for reasons of values.
Wanting to leave over values doesn't make someone better than those who stay. Leaving can take savings, skills that move easily or a second income at home, and not everyone has those. Some people who share the same values stay because they can't afford to go, or because they think they can do more good inside.
An example: Sam and the job that paid well
Sam is 33 and has spent four years as a data analyst at a company whose app offers short-term loans. The pay is good, his team is friendly and his manager rates him highly.
- A Monday in March Sam builds a report on repeat borrowers. The customers who take out a fifth loan in a year turn out to be the company's most profitable group. The report is praised in the weekly meeting. Sam goes for a walk at lunch and doesn't eat.
- A wedding in May When a cousin asks what he does, Sam says, “Data, for a tech company,” and changes the subject. On the way home he tells his partner he hates that sentence.
- July Sam tells his manager he is thinking of leaving. The next week he is offered a raise and a better title. He thanks her and asks for time. At home he says, “It's a lot of money to say no to, and it doesn't change what the reports are for.”
- October He takes a job with a public transit agency, at lower pay. Three months in, he says he sleeps better and checks the household budget more often than he used to.
Sam wasn't tired, and his team treated him well. The raise didn't reach the part of the job that bothered him, which was what the work was used for.
The story fits the way the phrase is used. The discomfort is about the company's impact, and asking what would have kept him gives a clear answer: more pay didn't help. The research on fit between a person's values and an employer's describes something close to this. In it, people who feel their values don't match their organization's are more likely to plan to leave, though far fewer of them actually do.
A different story would point elsewhere. If Sam had been exhausted, cynical and short with people, burnout would be the closer fit, and a raise or a rest might have helped. If he had stayed and done the minimum, the disengagement page, which covers quiet quitting, describes that. If he had been asked to do something he felt was clearly wrong, and carried it afterwards as guilt or shame, moral injury is the closer idea. The library's page on no longer believing in what one's company does covers what may be going on before anyone leaves.
What the research shows
There are no peer-reviewed studies of conscious quitting under that name. The figures quoted in articles come from one commissioned survey. Below are that survey, read for what it asked, and two pieces of research on nearby questions: whether a values mismatch leads people to leave, and whether people give up pay for an employer they believe in.
The one survey behind the phrase found many employees saying they would consider leaving over values, and a third saying they had. Research on fit finds that a values mismatch goes with plans to leave more than with leaving. Experiments show people will accept less pay for an employer they see as responsible. None of this tests conscious quitting as such.
In a 2023 survey of 4,000 UK and US employees, about half said they would consider resigning over a clash of values, and a third said they already had
Paul Polman's Net Positive Employee Barometer was run by Opinium as an online survey of 2,000 British and 2,000 American employees of private companies with 250 or more staff, weighted to be representative of such employees. Fieldwork ran from 6 to 20 January 2023, with an extra sample of employees aged 18 to 25.
Asked whether they would consider resigning if their company's values didn't match their own, 45 percent in the UK and 51 percent in the US said yes. Thirty-five percent in both countries said they had already left a job for that reason. The report says the figures were higher among Gen Z and millennial employees.
Doesn’t show A survey commissioned by a campaigner for the view it supports, published as a report without peer review. It asks what people would consider, which is far from what they do, and “already resigned for this reason” relies on memory and on how people explain their own choices. It covers employees of large private companies in two countries.
Across many studies, people whose values matched their organization's were less likely to plan to leave, and only a little less likely to actually go
In 2005, Amy Kristof-Brown, Ryan Zimmerman and Erin Johnson pooled 172 studies, with 836 effect sizes, on how well people fit their jobs, organizations, work groups and supervisors. Fit with the organization had a strong link with job satisfaction (a correlation of .44) and commitment (.51).
Its link with intending to quit was moderate, at −.35, across 34,276 people. Its link with actually leaving was much weaker, at −.14, and with how long people stayed close to zero, at .03.
Doesn’t show The studies are mostly surveys, so they can't show that a mismatch causes the wish to leave. Fit with an organization's values is broader than unease about its impact on the world. The gap between plans and leaving is a reminder that surveys of what people would do overstate what they do.
In online job experiments, learning about an employer's social responsibility lowered the pay people asked for
In 2016, Vanessa Burbano ran two randomized field experiments in online labor marketplaces. Workers were recruited for short jobs, and some, chosen at random, were told about the employer's social responsibility. She then recorded the pay they were willing to accept.
In the first experiment, the information slightly lowered the pay people asked for on average, and clearly lowered it among the highest performers. In the second, workers asked for 44 percent less for the same job after learning about the employer's social responsibility.
Doesn’t show Short online tasks, about joining an employer and not about leaving one. Accepting less for a brief job says little about giving up a salary and a career.
Try it: what would make it stay
If you are thinking of leaving a job, or have left one, write three short notes.
- What about the job I would be glad to stop being part of
- What the company could offer me that would make me stay: more pay, rest, a different boss, or a change in what it does
- What leaving would cost, in money and in how I see myself
If the second note says only a change in what the company does would help, the reason may be values, as this page describes. If more pay or rest would settle it, burnout or the deal itself may be closer. The third note is the part the surveys leave out.
What is conscious quitting?
Leaving a job, or being ready to leave it, because the employer's values or impact clash with one's own, rather than for pay or conditions. The phrase spread in February 2023 with a survey report by Paul Polman, the former chief executive of Unilever. It is a business-press term, and research hasn't studied it under that name.
Who coined the term conscious quitting?
It entered wide use with Paul Polman's 2023 Net Positive Employee Barometer, whose report said that “an era of conscious quitting is on the way.” We found no earlier use in the business press, though that doesn't rule one out.
What is the difference between quiet quitting and conscious quitting?
Quiet quitting, a 2022 social-media label, means staying in a job and doing only what is required. Conscious quitting means leaving, or being ready to leave, over the employer's values or impact. The first is about effort, the second about what the work is for.
How common is conscious quitting?
Nobody has measured it directly. In the one survey behind the phrase, 45 percent of UK and 51 percent of US employees said they would consider resigning over a values clash, and 35 percent said they already had. Research on values fit suggests far fewer act on such plans than hold them.
Is conscious quitting a Gen Z thing?
The 2023 survey reported higher figures among Gen Z and millennial employees than among older ones. It was one survey, commissioned to make the case for values at work, and age differences in what people say they would do may not show up in what they do.
Do people really leave jobs over values?
Some do. A 2005 meta-analysis of 172 studies found that people whose values didn't match their organization's were more likely to plan to leave, with a moderate link, and only a little more likely to actually leave.
Where the idea comes from
The phrase took off in February 2023, when Paul Polman, who ran Unilever from 2009 to 2019 and now campaigns for business action on climate change and inequality, published the first Net Positive Employee Barometer. The report, a survey of 4,000 UK and US employees run by the polling firm Opinium, said that “an era of conscious quitting is on the way.” Fortune, edie and other business outlets picked it up within weeks, setting it against quiet quitting, the 2022 label for doing the minimum while staying.
We found no earlier use of the phrase in the business press, though that doesn't rule one out. By 2026 at least one outlet used it more loosely, for any planned resignation made with care about values, goals or mental health.
Psychology has studied nearby ideas for decades without using the phrase. The closest is person and organization fit: how well a person's values match those of the place they work. Moral injury, studied mainly in military and health care workers, covers the harsher end, where work asks someone to do what they believe is wrong.
The question it adds
When someone wants to leave a job, most questions are about pay, hours or the boss. This idea asks about what the work is for.
If the pay doubled tomorrow, would the reason I want to leave still be there?
Paul Polman, former chief executive of Unilever, and the 2023 Net Positive Employee Barometer, a survey run by Opinium. Spread through the business press from February 2023
Questions to carry
- Which part of what this company does would I be glad to stop being part of?
- If I left tomorrow, what would I tell myself about why?
Situations where it comes up
Related
How this page was made. Built with Conscious Living AI and led by Andrew Fayad. How the library is made · Report an issue · Last changed November 7, 2026.