People will tolerate a lot when it comes to their jobs. Joanne, a paralegal, said she was sexually and verbally abused by her boss for months. For years Stephen, an advertising executive says he, "carried the company on my shoulders because the owner was so incompetent." But there comes a breaking point.

"They wanted me to lie about my billable hours," said Joanne. "They basically wanted me to commit fraud."

Stephen said one night he had worked until four in the morning on a project, went home and slept two hours and came back to the office at 9 a.m. When his boss saw him, "He said something about my car not being there at 8:30," said Stephen. A few weeks later the final straw came.

"I had just returned from vacation and we had an early morning meeting with a client to present a strategy. It had snowed all night. I was two minutes late and my boss was walking out the door to the meeting and said, 'We're not waiting for you.' I got to the client's office the same time he did and he acted like I was a leper. His presentation was awful and the client hated it. I salvaged it by coming up with a new strategy on the spot. Then he was all chummy because I had saved the day. That was the day I mentally checked out."

After that it's usually a matter of time before the scorned employee leaves and the company loses a valuable player. But could the marriage have been saved?

Disengaging from an employer is a process. And there are "several sequential and predictable steps that can unfold in the employee's journey from disengagement to departure," says Leigh Branham, author of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave (Amacom.)

Many managers are so busy or preoccupied they wouldn't even notice if their employees walked around with a sandwich board saying, "Staying and Becoming Less Engaged Every Day!" says Branham.

But the clues are there. Obvious early warning signs include absenteeism, tardiness or behavior that indicates withdrawal or increased negativity, she says.

And they usually start showing up after a shocking or jarring event that causes the employee to question his or her commitment-one they always remember.

One of my clients described her moment of realization as a psychic break. "I was emotionally committed to this company for 12 years. Then the senior management turned on us. They accused us of things we hadn't done." The trust was gone.

Another client had always received the highest performance rating for his work. In the last year he had gone to extreme efforts to take on several roles and had been given the highest rating again. Then he was told his rating was being downgraded. "I'm feeling really done," he told me.

The disengagement process starts with a worker who is thinking about quitting, says Branham. Then the person tries to change things, resolves to quit, considers the cost of quitting, passively seeks another job, prepares to actively seek a new job, actively seeks one, gets a job offer and either accepts, stays and disengages or quits without a job.

When I've suggested to my clients to talk over with their manager what's wrong, most either won't or are beyond that. They have, as my one client described, made a psychic break.

Research shows that 75 percent of employees are disengaged, says Branham. Although the employee does have a responsibility to speak up, when you look at the signs and gradual disengagement process, one thing seems clear, she says. There's a an urgent need for managers to initiate action to engage and re-engage employees-and there are daily opportunities to do it. A good place to start is to notice what people are going through, then talk about it.

© by Andrea Kay