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The Invisible Resignation

The Invisible Resignation

Stealing the Two Non-Negotiables of Life

Ed Clementi
September 01, 2025

By the time someone hands in their resignation letter,
they’ve already left months—sometimes years—earlier.

And that’s the part so many leaders and organizations don’t see.

The resignation that isn’t printed on paper.
The one you’ll never get back in an exit interview.
The one that quietly eats away at culture long before someone’s badge stops working.

It’s what I call the Invisible Resignation.

What Leaders Miss

If you’re leading a team or running an organization,
you’ve probably seen it without even realizing.

The once-energized employee who now just “does enough.”
The cameras that stay off in every meeting.
The work that technically gets done, but has no spark, no initiative, no edge.
The ideas that used to be spoken, now left unsaid.

It doesn’t happen overnight.
It happens drip by drip.

And when it does, it costs you more than you think.

Innovation dries up.
Momentum slows.
Customers feel the difference.
The culture erodes quietly, until mediocrity becomes the new standard.

That’s what invisible resignation looks like from your side of the desk.

What It Feels Like Inside

Now flip the lens.

What does invisible resignation feel like for the person living it?

They’re still there for the paycheck.
But their soul already left the building.

They wait for “something better,”
and weeks turn into months,
months turn into years.

The stress piles up.
The health declines.
The confidence erodes.

Every day chips away at them in ways they don’t even see until they look back.

And here’s the hardest truth:
Leadership failures don’t just cost output.
They cost people their lives — in time they’ll never get back,
and health they may never fully recover.

The Two Non-Negotiables

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

In life, there are two non-negotiables.
Your Time and Your Health.

Invisible resignation robs both.

For the employee, it means years wasted waiting and energy drained surviving.
For the organization, it means potential never realized and culture slowly bleeding out.

And the debt always comes due.

As Theophrastus said over 2,000 years ago:
“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”

When people give their time to an organization,
they’re giving you the most finite resource they have.
When they sacrifice their health,
it’s often in ways they’ll carry long after they leave.

And here’s the part leaders rarely think about:
those costs don’t stay at work.

The stress walks through the front door at night.
The resentment shows up at the dinner table.
The exhaustion passes from parent to child,
from spouse to spouse,
from team to team.

Invisible resignation doesn’t just drain performance —
it drains lives.
And eventually, it drains organizations of their very future.

If you’re a leader, what you’re spending—every day—
is other people’s time.
And if you’re careless,
you’re also spending their health.

And that…is Totally UnAcceptable!

Moving Forward

So how do we move differently?

For leaders:

Don’t just track retention. Track engagement.
Measure culture not by who stays, but by who still cares.
Ask yourself: Do they stay because they want to or because they have to?
Remember: keeping someone on payroll isn’t the same as keeping their belief, their energy, or their fire.

For those being led: