While high retention has traditionally been seen as a win, in 2026, it could also be a red flag. Why? Because your employees may well be ‘job-hugging’ – staying in jobs due to a need for comfort and security. Once that starts to happen, your organisation risks a culture of complacency, where staff become disengaged due to a lack of motivation and managers are forced to micromanage everything.
How can you ensure that job-hugging is a positive practice, leading to newly energised employees who are empowered to rediscover engagement in their work? The answer lies in your organisation’s management style.
The rise of the job huggers
A recent survey found that 75% of employees intend to stay in their current job for two or more years, and it’s easy to see why. With a volatile global economy, rising cost of living, and job cuts driven by AI growth, it’s not surprising that people want to job-hug rather than risk moving into the unknown.
As we all know, hiring new talent always comes at a cost—£6,125 per vacancy (rising to 50-100% of salary for senior roles), so job-hugging can seem like a good thing. But the issue arises when job-hugging breeds disengagement: talent is physically present but mentally checked out and no longer properly engaged or motivated. This is backed up by the job huggers themselves: 27% said they feel less satisfied and ‘stuck’ in their role.
It’s impossible to ignore the downsides of disengagement, both on a personal and an organisational level. In fact, Gallup’s latest State of the Workplace report estimates that lost productivity from disengagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion.
When employees stay put but stop stretching, managers often respond by tightening control and turning to micromanagement: constantly directing and telling employees what to do. However, this can be disastrous for employee engagement. If a manager constantly directs, employees are robbed of the opportunity to think for themselves, engage appropriately with tasks and develop independence in their roles, ultimately leading to further demotivation and disengagement.
It’s also harmful for managers: being relied upon by the team for everything can quickly lead to burnout. Continually stepping in to solve other people’s problems means that managers have less time to focus on the higher-value aspects of their role, which affects their growth and advancement prospects, as well as organisational performance.
Disengaged staff are also a particular challenge for ‘accidental managers’ – the estimated 82% of UK managers who end up in a managerial role with no formal training, and who might not be experienced enough or skilled enough to know how to tackle them.
It's therefore crucial that your staff are properly motivated and that your managers aren't defaulting to a ‘command and control’ style of management.
Breaking the cycle of micromanagement
A proven way to re-engage existing staff and reduce micromanagement is to build a culture of enquiry-led management through Operational Coaching®.
Asking powerful questions is a management and leadership superpower. It’s under-utilised, mainly because managers have never been taught how to use purposeful enquiry as a skill. It requires managers to let go of the idea that they must hold all of the answers and provide constant direction and advice, and instead ask questions that stimulate the other person’s thinking to find solutions. This opens employees up to a wealth of skills development, helps them prioritise their tasks more efficiently, and builds their confidence in decision-making, leading to a deeper sense of purpose in their work.
By incorporating the coaching-related behaviours of situational awareness, active listening and purposeful enquiry into their everyday management style, managers quickly become alert to the potential of situations where asking team members questions that invite them to think for themselves drives better outcomes.
The sustained use of this enquiry-led approach effectively taps into the team’s talents, improves collaboration and boosts productivity and engagement. By asking questions that invite others to think, managers signal that their contributions are valued, drawing team members toward them rather than pushing them away through micromanagement. Ultimately, the whole organisation benefits, as employees are enabled, greater trust is built, and managers regain valuable time by not taking on their team's work.
It’s not just a theory: the impact of Operational Coaching® has been proven in the field. A large-scale randomised controlled trial at the London School of Economics found that 48% of managers reported increased engagement and productivity in their teams after adopting this approach.
With this enquiry-led management style in place, job-hugging can actually become a positive thing for your organisation and won't lead to a culture of micromanagement in response. Both managers and employees will feel engaged, motivated, and productive in roles that support their development and the organisation's overall productivity.
Dominic and Laura Ashley-Timms are the CEO and COO of performance consultancy Notion, creators of the multi-award-winning STAR® Manager programme, and authors of the management bestseller The Answer is a Question: The Missing Superpower that Changes Everything and Will Transform Your Impact as a Manager and Leader.
