The flight risk on your team isn’t who looks stressed. It’s who’s out of psychological capital.

Somewhere on your team right now is someone who looks fine. Shows up on time, hits their numbers, doesn't complain in the hallway. They are also, on their lunch break, quietly updating a resume — because the reserve that used to get them through a bad quarter is running on empty. You will not see that in the metrics you already track. That is the gap this survey is actually about.

The American Psychological Association released a national workplace survey on September 23, 2026. It was conducted online by The Harris Poll on APA's behalf, among 2,009 employed U.S. adults, fielded May 21 through June 1 of this year, and weighted to match the population on age, gender, race, region, education, marital status, household size, work status and income. I should tell you plainly how I got this: APA's own release page sits behind bot-blocking software that would not load for me no matter how I asked it. What follows comes from the release as APA distributed it through the newswire service Newswise, checked line by line against Phys.org's independent coverage of the same release. The two match on every figure. Neither is a substitute for the full underlying report, which I was not able to open.

It is worth being exact about what kind of evidence this is. It is a self-reported survey, not an experiment and not a field study — nobody tracked anyone's actual job search or watched stress levels change over months. It is a weighted snapshot: people rating their own hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism on a validated five-item scale, then separately reporting how stressed they feel and whether they are job hunting. APA calls the four-part bundle psychological capital. That is enough evidence to say the two move together. It is not enough to say one causes the other. The release goes further than its own design does — it tells organizations they can help workers manage stress by investing in psychological capital — and that recommendation outruns the evidence — that caution is mine, not the survey's.

The numbers themselves are not subtle. Workers who scored low on psychological capital were far more likely to say they typically feel tense or stressed during the workday than workers who scored high — 55 percent versus 38 percent — and far more likely to say their work environment was hurting their mental health, 47 percent versus 24 percent. Almost two in five workers overall, 37 percent, now say their work environment has a negative effect on their mental health, up from 32 percent a year earlier, and the share who call their workplace healthy has dropped from 85 percent to 80 percent over the same year. But the number that should actually hold your attention is retention: 51 percent of low-scoring workers said they intend to look for a new job at a different organization within the next year. Among high-scoring workers, it was 19 percent — under one in five.

That is not a gap sitting inside the noise. That is the difference between a team you can plan a year around and one you cannot.

"Unlike credentials or technical skills, psychological capital often goes unrecognized and unaccounted for by organizational leaders. But research shows that it's not fixed and can be strengthened through intentional efforts, including steps employers can take." Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, APA CEO, quoted in APA's press release as distributed by Newswise

Here is why this lands differently for you than for almost anyone else in the building. A manager three levels down can afford to be surprised when a strong performer resigns. You cannot — not at the size company you run, where losing one experienced person mid-project shows up in your numbers within the quarter, not the year. Most leaders track people the way they track everything else: by output. Somebody is still hitting their targets, so they must be fine. This survey is a reminder that output and reserve are two different gauges, and the second one runs down without ever showing up on the first.

The part the research doesn't say, but that I will say plainly: you cannot see psychological capital by watching someone work. You have to ask, and you have to ask in a way that does not sound like a performance review. The employee who is running on fumes and the one who is genuinely fine can produce identical output for months before the gap shows up — usually as a resignation letter you did not see coming, from someone whose numbers gave you no warning at all.

One thing to do this week: pick the three people you would be most disrupted to lose, and have an actual conversation with each of them — not about their workload or their goals, but about how they are doing carrying it. Not a survey, not a check-in on a form. A conversation, in person, where you ask and then stay quiet long enough to hear the real answer. You are listening for resignation dressed up as fatigue.

If you want a more structured read on how you are wired to handle pressure — before the people closest to you tell you the hard way, in an exit interview — the Leadership Profile is built for exactly that.