What Type of Job Huggers Do You Have?

Daniel Goleman is author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence and Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day. He is a regular contributor to Korn Ferry. 

After years of grappling with the Great Resignation and quiet quitting, companies are now facing a new, unexpected trend: Data is showing that employees are staying put. Dubbed “job hugging,” this phenomenon describes workers who plan to hold on to their current jobs for the foreseeable future.

While the term sounds cozy, it’s often fueled by fear. Outside opportunities feel scarce, the job market seems treacherous, and uncertainty around the impact of AI has convinced many people they should hold tight to their current role, whether or not it’s the right one. “The job hugging trend is very much real right now,” says Brittney Molitor, a Korn Ferry managing consultant.

But here are the critical questions: Who is staying because they want to? And who is staying because they’re afraid to leave?

That distinction matters more than leaders may realize. When employees stay out of genuine alignment—because their work fuels them, connects to their sense of purpose, and allows them to grow—this is retention worth celebrating. It’s driven by happiness, values alignment, and loyalty. It’s the image of the ideal worker: someone positively committed to the organization and what it aims to do in the world.

But when people cling to their jobs out of fear, paralysis, or lack of self-awareness about what they truly want, retention takes on a darker form. We see disengagement, burnout, and stagnation—the very conditions organizations spend vast resources trying to prevent.

Self-awareness, one of the foundational competencies of emotional intelligence, is one way people can distinguish between these two states. In emotional-intelligence terms, it's the ability to understand your own emotions, values, and motivations—to know not just what you're good at, but what matters to you and why. Without it, employees can mistake comfort for fulfillment, or disguise (even to themselves) a fear of the unknown as patience and loyalty.

The cost of staying in a role that we have outgrown can be significant—not only for us, but also for the teams and systems in which we operate. When people don’t move in line with their own strengths, wants, needs, and sense of purpose, things go awry in all kinds of ways. Skills atrophy, resentment builds, pent up emotions become surface level conflicts, and mental health declines. What’s more, when the market opens up again—which it inevitably does—those who stayed too long are often the least prepared to move forward.

The Map of Meaning framework, developed by researcher Marjolein Lips-Wiersma, offers a useful lens on purpose. It describes four pathways to purpose: integrity with self, unity with others, expression of full potential, and service to others. Research shows that when people have clarity about these dimensions, they make better decisions about when to stay and when to go. Yet much of the data suggests most job huggers aren't experiencing this kind of meaning. Nearly half of workers say their current job offers few or no opportunities for growth. Leaders can assume that employees who can’t connect to any sense of purpose in their work are staying by default—not because they truly want to be there.

For leaders, this moment requires another emotional intelligence skill: organizational awareness, or the capacity to read the emotional currents and unspoken dynamics within teams and systems. Not all job huggers are the same. Strong organizational awareness can help leaders accurately distinguish between the high performers who are strategically staying because their work aligns with their values and those who are staying out of fear and fatigue. Ultimately, the members of the first group are the ones leaders will want to embrace and further invest in, because they’re intrinsically motivated and have the greatest potential for impact.

The latter group—the “checked out but still here” employees—represent a deeper organizational challenge. They're often people who have sought meaning but haven't found it. When leaders miss that distinction, they risk losing valuable contributors who simply need better support. These people hang out at the overlap of job-hugging and quiet quitting: While some just aren’t a fit, many need more opportunities for self-awareness, growth, and coaching. “Firms run the risk of becoming comfortable perches from which workers can jump when the time’s right,” says Matt Bohn, a Korn Ferry senior client partner .  

It's a powerful metaphor. A perch is temporary—a place to rest before flying away. A home is where we build, take root, and invest in something lasting.

Ultimately, the difference between the two is purpose. Organizations that help employees reconnect to meaning, create genuine pathways for growth, and build workplaces where purpose drives retention won't just survive the job-hugging era—they'll emerge with teams of people who've chosen to stay, even when the market presents other options. 

Co-written by Elizabeth Solomon

Click here to learn more about Daniel Goleman's Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence.