Back-sitting
Sitting with their backs to the future. Not looking forward, not steering. Just sitting. Waiting. Holding on.
Dorka Nagy-Józsa, Horizontal Thinking (2027)
Remember quiet quitting? HR already forgot it - the webinars moved on. Horizontal Thinking names something worse that hardly anyone has noticed, because on every dashboard it looks like good news. Dorka Nagy-Józsa coined a word for it: back-sitting.
What back-sitting is
Your people show up. Where you asked, as many days as you asked. They sit at their desks, they join the calls, cameras on if policy says so. But they're not really there. They are back-sitting: staying not because they want to, not because they're committed, but because they're terrified.
Back-sitters don't build new skills, because what's the point, the jobs are going away anyway. They don't take initiative, because they can't see past next quarter. They sit there, backs to the future, watching their own skills expire in real time, too paralyzed to do anything about it.
Back-sitting vs quiet quitting
| Quiet quitting | Back-sitting | |
|---|---|---|
| Shows up | Yes, doing the minimum | Yes, as many days as you asked |
| Faces | Forward - even if forward meant the exit | Nowhere |
| Driven by | Disengagement | Fear |
| On the dashboard | Looks like a problem | Looks like loyalty |
| Over time | A trend that moved on | Does not fix itself. It compounds. |
Why it looks like good news
If you lead anything: you don't have a retention problem. You have a back-sitting problem. Your retention numbers look gorgeous - people are staying, the dashboard is green, someone gets a bonus for it. But retention was a success metric in a world where the talented could leave.
In a frozen market, high retention measures fear, not loyalty.
The numbers are uncomfortable. In 2024 the drop in engagement alone - two percentage points in one year - cost the global economy 438 billion dollars (Gallup). In the US, the job-hopper's pay premium collapsed and in early 2025 flipped negative: movers' pay grew more slowly than stayers', the first time since 2010 (Atlanta Fed). Employers expect nearly 40 percent of workers' core skills to change by 2030 (World Economic Forum). The back-sitters are not in the reskilling line. They are the reason the line is short.
Fear requires awareness
The book's trapdoor chapter turns the usual reading of fear upside down. In one industrial company, the commercial director - judgment, relationships, the occasional expensive intuition - was terrified of AI. Two floors down, the coordinator of a rule-based, structured-data team with a 99.2 percent accuracy score was perfectly calm: “Someone always has to check the numbers.”
Fear requires awareness. If you don't understand what AI can already do today, you can't fear it.
Calm and safety have almost nothing to do with each other right now. The people panicking are mostly the ones who will be fine; the people sleeping well are standing on the machinery. And the comforting sentence “AI won't take your job - someone using AI will” made it worse: it didn't protect anyone from the change, only from the awareness. When awareness finally arrives, via a layoff round or a live demo, it lands on someone with zero practice. That person doesn't spring into learning. That person freezes. The freeze, at scale, is back-sitting.
The canyon
While back-sitters sit, the distance between them and the people who turned early is not growing linearly. The book calls AI the most powerful Matthew-effect amplifier ever built: to everyone who has, more will be given. EY's 2025 Work Reimagined survey found that 88 percent of workers “use AI” at work - and only 5 percent use it in a way that actually transformed their work.
This is not a digital divide you can step across. It's a canyon, and it widens by the day. What separates the two sides is four habits: experimenting unprompted, letting a machine improve your thinking, compounding week after week, and being shameless about asking.
What leaders can do on Monday
- Run a fear audit.Write down what you believe AI can do in your job today. Then spend one hour making it do it, on a real deliverable from last week. Calibrate the fear on data, not headlines.
- Say “show me.”Not “do you use AI?” - everyone says yes. Ask each person to show you the last real thing they did with it, ten minutes each. Within a week you'll know where your canyon runs.
- Reread your retention dashboard as a fear metric.Take the three teams you're proudest of keeping and ask honestly: staying because they want to, or because they're terrified?
- Adopt the two-day rule.Two days without trying a new tool, model or feature: kick yourself. The unit of learning is no longer a course. It's a habit.
- Reconsider “mandatory.”The person three years into back-sitting will not voluntarily sign up for the thing they're terrified of. Someone has to start their grief curve for them.
The way out is the same for individuals: stop defending the task pile and build a position.
In the book
This page draws on Chapter 3 (The Trapdoor) of Horizontal Thinking: Leadership after the end of the specialist era by Dorka Nagy-Józsa, PCC, published by Y2Y Ltd. on January 1, 2027. The book has fifteen chapters and two letters from the future, and every chapter ends with something you can actually do on Monday.
Dorka Nagy-Józsa is CEO of Y2Y Ltd., an ICF PCC coach and an international keynote speaker on AI and leadership.
Questions
What is back-sitting?
Back-sitting is a term coined by Dorka Nagy-Józsa in her book Horizontal Thinking for employees who stay in their jobs not because they want to or are committed, but because they are afraid - showing up, sitting with their backs to the future, not building new skills and not taking initiative while their skills expire.
How is back-sitting different from quiet quitting?
Quiet quitters did the minimum but at least faced forward, even if forward meant the exit. Back-sitters face nowhere: they stay out of fear. Quiet quitting showed up as a problem; back-sitting shows up as high retention and looks like loyalty. And unlike quiet quitting, it does not fix itself - it compounds.
Why is high employee retention not always good news?
Retention was a success metric in a world where talented people could leave. When the job market freezes and people feel trapped, high retention can measure fear rather than loyalty. The book suggests rereading retention dashboards as a fear metric.
How do you spot back-sitting in a team?
Look for people who show up reliably but have stopped learning, stopped taking initiative and cannot see past next quarter. A practical test from the book: ask each person to show you the last real thing they did with AI, ten minutes each. “Do you use AI?” gets a yes from almost everyone; “show me” tells you who has actually turned.
Who coined the term back-sitting?
Dorka Nagy-Józsa, PCC, in Chapter 3 (The Trapdoor) of Horizontal Thinking: Leadership after the end of the specialist era, published by Y2Y Ltd. on January 1, 2027.
Read the whole argument.
Horizontal Thinking is published on January 1, 2027. The Kindle edition is open for pre-order now; the paperback goes on sale on Amazon the same day.