Something has shifted in how people talk about their jobs. A few years ago, the story was "quiet quitting." Then it was "job hopping." Now, workers are "job hugging," holding tight to the jobs they have because the market feels too shaky to risk a move. Underneath all of these labels is the same question: do I actually matter here?

That question has been showing up again and again on MPR News with Angela Davis, and it's backed up by a wave of recent workplace research. Together, they make a pretty strong case that feeling valued at work isn't a soft perk. It's one of the biggest levers organizations have for engagement, retention, and performance.

The research: engagement is slipping, and appreciation is the missing piece

Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report has tracked a steady decline in employee engagement, falling from 23% in 2022 to around 20% in 2025, one of the sharpest drops the survey has recorded outside of the pandemic. Gallup ties much of that decline to what's happening with managers specifically: manager engagement fell even faster than employee engagement overall, and Gallup estimates the resulting drag on productivity costs the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The report also flags a quieter statistic worth sitting with: roughly one in five employees say they felt lonely for a large part of the previous day, a number that climbs among remote workers.

The American Psychological Association's Work in America surveys add texture to that picture. The 2025 survey found that more than half of U.S. workers say job insecurity is significantly affecting their stress levels, and workers who feel connected to colleagues are less likely to be derailed by that stress. The 2024 edition, focused on psychological safety, found that workers under 25 report feeling lonely and unappreciated at noticeably higher rates than older employees, and that a meaningful share of workers feel their ideas aren't taken seriously by colleagues outside their age group. APA's researchers link psychological safety directly to job satisfaction, better relationships with coworkers, and lower rates of burnout.

Then there's a newer, more unsettling term: "quiet cracking." A 2025 survey of 1,000 U.S. workers by the training platform TalentLMS found that just over half had experienced some degree of it, a persistent, low-grade unhappiness that erodes motivation without necessarily showing up in performance numbers right away. The same survey found that employees going through quiet cracking are far more likely to feel undervalued and unrecognized than their more engaged peers, and that workers who hadn't received any training in the past year felt notably less secure in their roles than those who had.

On the more hopeful side, the O.C. Tanner Institute's 2026 State of Employee Recognition report, based on a global study of more than 4,000 employees, found that recognition works best when it's tied to real relationships and growth rather than treated as a standalone reward. Employees who saw their recognition connected to career growth were far more likely to do their best work, and those who felt recognition helped build genuine relationships were far more likely to stay with their employer.

What Minnesotans are hearing about this on the radio

This isn't just a national trend playing out in HR journals. It's a live conversation on Minnesota airwaves.

In late 2024, Angela Davis spoke with business ethicist Christopher Wong Michaelson about his book on meaningful work, reframing the usual question of "what is the meaning of life" into "what is the meaning of work," and pushing listeners to think about what actually makes a job worth doing beyond the paycheck.

More recently, MPR News guest host Chris Farrell dug into the shift from "job hopping" to "job hugging," exploring why so many workers are staying put even when they're unhappy, largely because the job market feels too uncertain to risk a change. And in a related conversation, Davis brought together an economist, a state labor market analyst, and a recruiting executive to unpack what's really driving today's layoffs and hiring patterns, and what that instability means for how people experience their jobs day to day.

Taken together, these conversations point to the same undercurrent as the research: a lot of people are staying in jobs out of fear rather than genuine attachment, and that's a fragile foundation for any organization to build on.

Beyond the pizza party: what employers can actually do

Free lunch and a "great job, team!" email might feel good for an afternoon, but they don't move the numbers above. Here's what CEOs, CHROs, and managers can actually implement to build a culture where people feel genuinely valued.

1. Build recognition into the workflow, not just the calendar. Instead of relying on annual awards or occasional shout-outs, build specific, timely acknowledgment into regular touchpoints: project retros, one-on-ones, sprint reviews. The O.C. Tanner research is detailed: recognition lands hardest when it's tied to a person's growth and connects them to others, not when it's a generic pat on the back. A manager who can point to exactly what someone did and why it mattered will always outperform a company-wide "kudos" channel.

2. Actually train managers, and keep training them. Gallup's data consistently shows that managers are the single biggest lever on team engagement, yet a large share of managers globally have never received formal management training. This is a budget and staffing decision, not a slogan: give new managers real coaching skills, and give experienced managers ongoing development, not a single onboarding module they forget in a month.

3. Give people real input into decisions that affect their work. Psychological safety research from APA points to concrete practices, not vague "open door" policies: structured ways for employees to give feedback, involving them in goal-setting for their own roles, and following up visibly when their input changes something. If employees give feedback in a survey and never hear what happened to it, that survey becomes a trust-eroding exercise rather than a valuing one.

4. Invest in growth paths, especially when times are uncertain. The quiet cracking research found that employees who received training in the past year felt substantially more secure in their roles than those who didn't. In a period of job-hugging and layoff anxiety, cutting training budgets is exactly backward. Mentorship programs, skill-building time, and clear promotion criteria tell people the organization is planning for their future, not just their output this quarter.

5. Communicate honestly, especially about the hard stuff. Job insecurity is a major driver of workplace stress right now. Employees can handle honest bad news better than they can handle silence or spin. Regular, candid updates about the state of the business, even when the news isn't great, signal respect. False reassurance followed by a surprise layoff does lasting damage to trust that no recognition program can repair.

6. Protect people's time and autonomy. Respecting boundaries, such as honoring time off, limiting after-hours messages, and building in meeting-free stretches, is consistently linked to higher psychological safety in APA's research. A culture that says it values people but expects them to answer emails at 9 p.m. is not actually valuing them; it's just saying so.

7. Design recognition and reward systems around relationships, not just individual heroics. Recognition that highlights how someone helped a colleague or strengthened a team tends to build more loyalty than recognition that only celebrates solo wins. That matters especially for hybrid and remote teams, where the loneliness Gallup identified is more pronounced, and the social glue of an office doesn't happen by accident.

The bottom line

None of this requires a bigger perks budget. It requires managers who are trained to notice people, systems that make honest communication normal, and leaders willing to treat growth and recognition as part of how work gets done rather than an occasional bonus on top of it. In a labor market where people are staying put more out of caution than commitment, the organizations that figure this out now will be the ones employees actually want to stay with, not just the ones they're too nervous to leave.

Sources: Gallup, "State of the Global Workplace" (2025-2026); American Psychological Association, "Work in America" surveys (2024-2025); TalentLMS, "Quiet Cracking" report (2025); O.C. Tanner Institute, "State of Employee Recognition" (2026); MPR News with Angela Davis, "What Makes a Job Worth Doing?" (Nov. 2024), "Job Hopping vs. Job Hugging" (Dec. 2025), and "Layoffs and Hiring: Understanding Today's Job Market" (July 2026).