Why people stop trying: The silent impact of unfair workplaces

Over the past few decades, there have been countless voices in the world of the workforce that have been raised, uncovering the truth long ignored: unjust workplaces are not only draining; they break our will to try. It could be through micro-aggressions, toxic management, or a lack of empathy, but people from all industries are being gradually worn down. This quiet attrition, unspoken but lethal, is depriving people of ambition, well-being, and trust. What makes this even more frightening is that most of this erosion is not observed until it is too late. Employees will not protest or file formal grievances. They start to show up late, put in less effort, or check out mentally before they leave physically. The stress to “grind in silence” makes suffering commonplace and discourages dissent. When organizations do not look into the causes of disengagement, they open themselves to becoming places where excellence is no longer a desire but a chore. As productivity grows, so does the invisibility of emotional costs feeding it. We need to begin seeing giving up as not a failure of will but rather a reaction to unremitting unfairness.

The cultural shock that reawakens suppressed despair

A software professional returning to India after a decade in the US recounted the jarring shift from a merit-based environment to one steeped in hierarchy and rigidity. “I wasn’t ready for this” (PV, 2025a). The empathy, autonomy, and flexibility cultivated abroad were replaced with opaque decision-making and limited support systems (Anjana PV, 2025a). That cultural shock not only diminishes participation but also erodes motivation. The discovery that experience and capability will fail to earn respect can send a resounding message: it is futile to attempt.

Toxic leadership’s suffocating burden

Toxic management strategies, like public humiliation and blame-shifting, both degrade self-esteem and steal one’s willingness to continue. A Bengaluru engineer learnt this the hard way, collapsing during a standard video call after being embarrassed and left isolated. The episode went viral, as did thousands like it, before the engineer resigned quietly (ET Online, 2025). Similarly, when an injured worker with a broken leg was instructed to return to work and provided with a chair as accommodation, it conveyed a disturbing message: health is not as important as attendance (Singharia, 2025). These anecdotes tell us that not all individuals leave jobs because they do not have the ability or desire. They leave because they feel worthless.

Bias and favouritism: The Insidious Workplace Poison

The perception of futility is magnified when discrimination and favouritism dominate. An American software engineer complained of being discriminated against by his Indian boss at IBM. Americans were being let go while Indians were kept on, even if they were equally competent (PV, 2025b). When groups are segregated based on in-group preference, trust disappears. People start questioning, Why should one be good if it will make no difference? The outcome is disengagement, lower effort, and mounting stress.

When hustle culture breaks its promise

“Work hard and everything will be yours.” That is the hustle culture promise. But this slogan more and more sounds like a scam. Tejasvi (2025) cautions us that hustle culture is deceiving you. Sustained stress actually rewires the brain physically, reducing attention, memory, and creativity, and eroding performance. Businesses that celebrate burnout as commitment are secretly undermining long-term productivity and creativity. People don’t give up trying because they are lazy, but because their exhaustion saps their will and pleasure.

Stress: A Business Problem, Not an Individual Issue

Chomse, Roos, Misra, and Whillans (2025) warn that worker stress is more than an HR issue. It is a serious business threat. Stress is oftentimes handled as an individual failure instead of a systemic flaw. The consequence is unacknowledged burnout, increased healthcare expenses, turnover, and lost productivity (Chomse et al., 2025). If businesses do not own up, employees feel left behind. In the end, they disconnect or depart.

What Unfair Workplaces Take from Us

Unfair work environments have effects much deeper than basic turnover:

1. Loss of mental health: Shame, fear, and isolation cause anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion (ET Online, 2025)
2. Erosion of trust: When individuals observe favouritism or are publicly humiliated, they no longer trust managers or peers
3. Stifled creativity: Endless stress and fear stifle innovation and risk-taking (Tejasvi, 2025)
4. Talent flight: Skilled professionals depart. Sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly
5. Perpetuation of toxic culture: Members who survive tend to toughen up, imitate violent behaviour, or muffle vulnerability

This is the unspoken theft at work. Ambition is not destroyed overnight. It dies under constant neglect, small injustices, and a culture of quiet rejection.

What Needs to Change?

1. Reinvent leadership boundaries and kindness
   Firms need to create spaces in which empathy, clarity, and emotional support are givens. These should not be nice-to-have virtues. Leaders need to be trained to create psychological safety and show conflict empathy. When managers mock or threaten, people don’t grow. They close down.
2. Refuse hustle culture through sustainable rituals
   As per Tejasvi (2025), hustle culture needs to be brought down by making room for purposeful breaks. Ten-minute meditations, lunchtime breaks, and “nervous-system rehab” activities such as deep breathing must be prioritised. These are not treats; they are mental first aid that needs to be done.
3. Install systemic stress tracking
   Stress needs to be addressed as an important business metric, in addition to finance and operations. Chomse et al. (2025) make the case for the inclusion of stress monitoring in executive dashboards. No organisational change is possible without real-time data.
4. Fix the bias where it starts
   Hiring and promotion practices should be merit-based and transparent, not based on social or national identity. Employees should feel free to report favouritism. Leaders should be held accountable for biased decisions, not rewarded for running cliques.
5. Value people over presence.
   As the example of the traumatised employee demonstrated, quantifying productivity as mere physical presence is injurious (Singharia, 2025). If a worker is physically unfit or mentally ill, asking them to “show up” only exacerbates trauma. Workplaces need to be humane first.

A call for dignity

When individuals give up, it is not usually because they are unambitious, unskilled, or unresilient. Instead, it is because they have been rendered invisible, undervalued, or powerless. Unfair workplaces do not merely stifle development. They actively destroy it. The tales of overlooked injuries, prejudiced managers, performative wellness, and poisonous bosses are not unconnected events. They are indicators of a more profound cultural breakdown that values output over humanness.

If organizations are to hold onto the best in people, they need to select dignity over dominance, inclusion over favouritism, and empathy over exploitation. An ethical workplace is not a privilege; it is the building block for lasting success. Until leaders address the quiet harm they cause by disregarding injustice and burnout, the quiet flight of talent and spirit will persist. We need to begin asking, “What did we do to get them to stop trying?” rather than, “Why aren’t people working harder?” Because individuals don’t quit that easily. They quit when attempting no longer seems reasonable.

If companies wish to flourish in the long term, they need to create spaces where individuals are seen, heard, and secure. The price of disregarding emotional well-being is not simply accounted for in attrition numbers but also in the potential, loyalty, and imagination that is lost in transit. Only when equity becomes the norm, not the anomaly, will attempting it be worth it again.

Authors: Akshita Pandey, Undergraduate Student, FLAME University; & Prof. Moitrayee Das, Faculty of Psychology, FLAME University.