For decades, businesses have treated employee retention as a slow-moving game of chess, focused on incremental shifts in satisfaction. But research suggests that half of all resignations are triggered not by a slow burn, but a sudden jolt.

Many employers tend to think of quitting as a slow, rational and highly deliberative process. 

They might assume that a growing dissatisfaction gradually leads an employee to weigh the pros and cons of their role against external opportunities, and assume that if they can just keep the satisfaction thermostat at the right temperature then they can prevent things from reaching a tipping point.

However, Anthony Klotz, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at UCL School of Management – who coined the term ‘The Great Resignation’ – explains that this rational approach only accounts for about half of the turnover businesses experience.

The other half, according to his research, is driven by something much more sudden and impulsive: a “jolt”.

“Most of us are only ever one event away from leaving our jobs,” says Klotz. “It’s this one event that happens, big or small, in our personal or professional life that all of a sudden makes us rethink our relationship with work and – not always, but sometimes – leads to quitting fairly quickly.”

For HR practitioners, understanding these jolts is the key to stabilising a workforce in an era of disruption and shifting work-life boundaries.

What turns a ‘jolt’ into action?

Klotz, who has recently written a book based on his research called ‘Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters’ – isn’t suggesting that every bad day at work is leading to a resignation.

We’ve all had moments where we are “annoyed about on the bus ride home,” only to have forgotten the grievance by the time we go to bed, he says.

Klotz shared three specific markers that, based on organisational research, have the potential to drive an employee to action:

• Disruption: The event must change a concrete element of the employee’s life. This is why return-to-office mandates, for example, can be jolting; they physically disrupt the established boundaries between work and life, he says.
• Novelty: Human psychology is tuned to notice the unusual. If a manager who always says “good job” suddenly stops, the employee is snapped out of “autopilot mode” and might assume something is wrong/
• Value conflict: Klotz says a jolt is most dangerous when it conflicts with our values or what is meaningful in our lives, says Klotz. For one employee, the removal of a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program might be a minor irritation; for another, it could be a devastating signal that their values no longer align with the organisations.

“Usually the ones that drive [employees’] to action are ones that are disruptive to [their] life,” he says. “It’s not just something [they] can brush off. It’s changed some element of [their] life.”

“Most of us are only ever one event away from leaving our jobs.” –  Anthony Klotz, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at UCL School of Management

Six different types of jolts to look out for

While AHRI’s research suggests that turnover rates are actually on the decline in Australia, businesses could still be at risk of seeing an eventual increase in turnover rates when market conditions recover. So now is the right time to ensure your organisation is prepared.

Klotz says HR should move beyond the annual engagement survey and begin monitoring for six specific types of jolts:

1. Direct jolts

These are negative events that happen directly to an individual at work, such as harassment or a high-profile failure. Klotz recalls his own early career failure jolt.

“Early in my career, I was in a leadership development role at General Mills, working as an inbound planner. I did the one thing you simply can’t do in that role: I ran the plant out of flour – the main ingredient for almost all our cereal.

“I effectively shut down the entire plant. It was a disaster and an undeniable failure. But that jolt made me realise that despite my degree and growing up in a family logistics business, I wasn’t actually very good at it. I discovered I was much better at managing people than managing inventory, and that single event prompted me to switch my career path from logistics to operations.”

2. Collateral jolts

Resignations do not happen in a vacuum. When a co-worker leaves – especially a friend – it can create a collateral jolt for those left behind. Not only can remaining employees lose social support, but they often have to take on some of their colleague’s work, usually without extra pay. This can prompt employees to start pondering whether the grass may be greener in a different organisation, says Klotz.

“I went to a conference once and found out at breakfast, and then lunch, and then again at an after party, that three of my close co-workers were interviewing [for new jobs]. I wasn’t thinking about leaving at the start of that day, but by the end of that day, I was like, “I’m going to say ‘yes’ to a school that’s been asking me to interview with them for a while.” I ended up leaving, but the three others stayed.”

3. Honeymoon jolt

Statistically, Klotz says the first year is the most common year for quitting. These “honeymoon jolts” occur when the glossy expectations that are sold during the recruitment phase clash with the honeymoon hangover of daily reality.

“Our excitement over a new job can quickly shift to dissatisfaction when those expectations aren’t met.”

4. Crossover jolts

These jolts originate outside the workplace but reverberate through it. For example, a personal health scare or the death of a family member often triggers the realisation that “life is too short” for a specific job.Klotz shares the story of a high-earning tech worker he interviewed for his book who quit to become a stay-at-home parent after her mother passed away. The jolt made her “glitzy lifestyle” feel irrelevant compared to family time.

“It could be something smaller than this, like a partner commenting that “all you do is work”, which prompts someone to reflect on the ways work might be taking over their life.”

5. Remote jolts

Remote jolts come from global events – tragedies or “mega-threats” on the other side of the world that trigger us to rethink our own lives and priorities.”Any time we hear about a tragedy or a death, it creates a moment of ‘mortality salience’ – a sharp reminder that we, too, will die one day. Psychologically, these thoughts often compel us to double down on our existing value systems.

“If someone is deeply religious, they may feel a sudden, urgent need to reconnect with their faith; if they are a family person, they pivot their energy back toward the home. For others, it’s about legacy – ensuring that their work or community contributions will outlive them. These jolts force a confronting question: “Why am I spending so much of my finite time on mundane tasks like [writing] reports, when I should be focusing on the things that truly matter?””

6. Positive jolts

Jolts aren’t always negative, Klotz adds. A positive jolt, such as being promoted or earning a new skill set, can also prompt people to look beyond their current role or career.

“Positive jolts often stem from the same psychological triggers as negative ones, but they operate by expanding our sense of possibility. When a positive event occurs, it places us in a high-resource mind space where we become significantly more open to epiphanies and alternative life paths.”

Consider the research on basketball players: when a shooter is on a ‘hot streak,’ they often describe the basket as appearing much larger than it actually is. The same phenomenon occurs in our careers, he says.

“When a string of successes occurs, we feel a surge of self-efficacy – a belief that we can achieve almost anything. This newfound confidence makes us open to radical shifts we might otherwise dismiss: returning to university to pursue a childhood dream, scaling a side hustle into a full-time venture, or exploring entirely different professional identities.”

Strategic responses for HR practitioners

Jolts are inevitable, which means HR’s role is to build scaffolding around these moments to prevent them, when possible, from turning into resignations – noting that many organisations will still want to aim for a healthy level of turnover to bring in fresh skills and perspectives.

Klotz suggests the following four tips:

Anticipate jolts in change initiatives

When planning a shift in work schedules or a restructure, HR can take five minutes to ask: “Who do we think is going to be most jolted by this?”.

For example, in a hospital setting a nurse whose shifts are usually week-on, week-off might feel highly impacted by what a leadership team might deem a simple tweak to a rostering plan.

“The shift we are seeing in people analytics is moving us away from the era of ‘one-size-fits-all’ HR solutions. We are becoming increasingly adept at developing bespoke employee profiles and tailored plans.”

This level of granularity becomes useful when navigating organisational change, as it allows HR to support managers to identify exactly who is most likely to experience a specific shift as a direct jolt.

“When we can foresee these jolts, we can take proactive steps to mitigate the friction. At a minimum, it allows for a targeted check-in from a manager to see how that specific individual is processing the change. 

“In today’s environment, we must recognise that almost any organisational change has the potential to become a jolt; our task is to ensure we have the diagnostic tools in place to catch them before they turn into departures.”

Normalise “expectation preparation”

To curb the 90-day quick quitting trend, Klotz suggests expectation alignment during onboarding.

Rather than just selling the dream, HR could tell new hires: “We’ve done the best job we can to give you an idea of what it’s going to be like… but there are some expectations you have of us that we might not meet. When that happens, come talk to us”.

This builds trust from day one and creates a safety valve for honeymoon jolts.

Train managers in resignation resilience

Turnover contagion often starts when a manager responds poorly to a resignation. Managers need training on how to stay open-minded and adaptable during these moments.

Klotz shares an example of a University Dean who, when he tried to resign, instead put him on a one-year leave of absence.

“I thought it was so low cost for her… but such a big deal to me. It sent this really positive signal and lowered my stress about leaving.”

Operationally, this approach may not be feasible for many businesses, but it’s an example of how treating an employee exit in a positive manner can leave the door open for high-performing talent to potentially return in the future.

Deploy early warning analytics

Employee dissatisfaction can often be picked up in their moments of silence, says Klotz. He suggests using AI-enabled technology to track early earning signals.

This might look like analysing meeting transcripts to see if a usually talkative, outspoken and/or collaborative employee has started keeping their ideas and opinions to themselves.

Autonomy as an antidote

Klotz believes the most effective way to buffer against jolts is to provide employees with the autonomy they crave.

When he asks people what they would do if they won the lottery, they rarely say they would quit working entirely, he says. They say they would become entrepreneurs or artists – they want to pursue passions.

“Human beings have a fundamental need for autonomy,” says Klotz. 

By allowing employees to recraft certain elements of their jobs to align with their intrinsic motivations, he says HR can move an employee from a state of “autopilot” to a state of genuine engagement.

In an era defined by a constant cadence of change and a heightened search for personal meaning, retention can no longer be viewed as a static achievement, but as a dynamic, event-driven process. 

The most resilient organisations will be those that stop trying to outpace external shocks and instead focus on building a foundation of autonomy and bespoke support – ensuring that when the inevitable jolt arrives, it serves not as an exit ramp, but as a catalyst for a deeper, more intentional commitment to the work.