27% of UK Workers Have Considered Quitting Over 'Loud Working'

More than one in four UK workers — 27% — have considered quitting a job because of a "loud working" culture, and 10% have already walked out over it. That is the headline finding of new research from Tide, a company registration provider, and it lands a retention problem squarely on HR's desk: the same visibility behaviour some employers quietly reward is driving a measurable share of exits.

"Loud working" — the practice of making one's work conspicuous through LinkedIn posts, Slack or Teams updates, speaking up in meetings and replying to messages instantly — divides the workforce. The survey suggests the divide is now expensive.

What does the numbers say about the time cost?

Across the UK, workers spend an average of 2.8 hours a week making their work visible. Over a year, Tide calculates, that amounts to 131 hours — more than 17 working days per employee spent on self-promotion rather than the work itself. For people-process owners, that figure sits awkwardly between "personal branding" and "productivity leakage," and no current time-use policy addresses it directly.

Who benefits — and who leaves?

The incentives are real, which is why the trend persists. Among those who make their work visible, 77% say it produced at least one career or business benefit in the past year. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, 34% credit it with a pay rise. Visibility, in other words, is being converted into compensation — a fact any performance-review calibration exercise should probably acknowledge.

Small business owners are the most active practitioners: 65% spend time making their work visible, against 39% of employees. It pays. Nearly half (46%) of owners who share their work say it brought in more enquiries from potential customers, and 43% have won new customers or clients as a result. Owners are more than three times as likely as employees to see more enquiries (14%) and twice as likely to win new customers (21%). Overall, 86% of owners who promote themselves publicly say it has paid off in some way.

George Schmidt, CEO UK/Europe at Tide, puts the distinction plainly: "Loud working has mixed reactions in the workplace and it's easy to understand that a colleague who turns every small win into an announcement might be off-putting. But our research shows there's a difference between being performative and backing yourself."

He adds: "For small business owners sharing your work, your wins and your expertise is often the most effective marketing you have, and almost half of the owners we spoke to say it's bringing in new enquiries."

Why are 25 to 34-year-olds both the loudest and the most fed up?

The generational split is the survey's sharpest finding. Some 68% of 25 to 34-year-olds spend time each week making their work visible — more than three times the rate of over-55s, at 21%. They also invest the most time: five hours a week on average, or 234 hours a year. That is to visible work roughly what a part-time second job is to a first.

Yet the same cohort is the most likely to be repelled by the culture it dominates. Nearly half (46%) of 25 to 34-year-olds have considered quitting because of loud working, and one in five (20%) already have. The people most fluent in the practice are also the most exhausted by it — a retention signal that should worry any employer with a young workforce.

Where is the pressure highest?

The splits by gender, geography and sector are consistent rather than dramatic. Men are more likely than women to have considered quitting or already quit over loud working, at 32% versus 21%. Londoners feel it most: 44% say a loud working culture has made them consider leaving a job. By sector, IT and telecoms (46%) and finance (45%) lead the league of the exasperated — precisely the industries where always-on messaging tools are most embedded.

What should HR take from this?

The survey is vendor research, not a peer-reviewed study, and Tide's commercial interest in small business formation is worth noting. But the retention numbers are large enough to matter regardless of provenance. Employers now face a balancing act: visibility behaviour demonstrably correlates with pay rises and career benefit for individuals, and with customer acquisition for owners, while simultaneously alienating a quarter of the workforce — including the age band most employers are competing to hire and keep.

The practical questions follow from the data. Does recognition in your organisation depend on visibility rather than output? If 2.8 hours a week of self-promotion is the de facto price of being noticed, quieter employees are effectively working a tax their louder colleagues don't pay. Schmidt's own framing — "the good news is that you get to do it on your own terms" — applies to founders, not staff.

Tide's projection is that loud working will dominate the workplace by 2027, carried by the 25 to 34 cohort's habits. If even half that forecast holds, employers can expect the visibility gap to keep widening — and the quitting statistics to keep testing whether recognition systems reward work, or merely the noise around it.