We tend to place moral injury in the 'wellbeing' category, but that misses the point. At its core, moral injury arises when people are exposed to situations that conflict with their own ethical framework and feel unable to act on that tension.

 

Recent publications are starting to recognise this as more than just a psychological issue. For example, this paper, published in 2025 in Australia argues that moral injury can be a distinct and potentially avoidable form of harm, linked not only to psychological effects but also physical symptoms and suicidality, and may be relevant to employer duty of care in negligence.

 

For organisations, particularly in law and other high-stakes professions, the risk isn’t just individual harm. Repeated, unresolved ethical conflicts can affect judgement, independence, and willingness to challenge, all of which sit at the heart of regulatory expectations. That makes moral injury not a new category of issue, but a gap in how we currently understand and manage risk.

 

The most important point here, is that moral injury is relatively straightforward to identify, address and prevent. Our framework enables organisations to take the action required to mitigate this distinct risk factor. 

 

Moral injury impacts engagement, productivity and retention and is the primary driver of values-based attrition. Most companies don’t have a clean metric for values-based attrition but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It’s likely sitting inside the categories we already track: “culture”, “fit”, or “career decisions”. People rarely say they’re leaving because of ethical conflict. They say, “it didn't feel right” or “I wanted something more aligned”.

 

The cost of replacing an employee is significant: typically estimated at 50–150% of annual salary for skilled roles. This is particularly pertinent for younger generations coming into the workplace, who care more about their work aligning with their values. In the legal sector, for example, recent research reported by Legal Cheek shows associate attrition rising from 9% to 16% in a single year, with each departure costing firms up to $1 million (£790k) in lost revenue and replacement costs. That’s a substantial sunk cost, particularly when it happens early in careers, just as firms begin to realise a return on their investment.

 

The practical point is this: if you’re not measuring whether people feel able to raise and resolve ethical conflicts, you won’t see this driver of attrition. But it will still show up in disengagement, early exits (particularly at junior levels), and loss of experienced talent. This isn’t about proving a new cause of attrition; it’s about making an existing, but currently invisible, one visible and manageable.

 

Step 1: Identify whether this is a problem in your organisation 

You may be reading this and thinking "that's not us"... but are you actually collecting the data? Here is a quick win that can be implemented easily to identify whether moral injury might be driving avoidable attrition in your business:

 

🎯 Add one or two targeted questions in engagement surveys:
❓ “I feel comfortable raising ethical concerns about work”
❓ “The work I do aligns with my personal values”

 

🎯 Refine exit interview questions:
❓“Were there aspects of the work or how it was done that made you uncomfortable?”

❓ Did you frequently experience ethical conflicts in your role, and if so, did this impact your wellbeing and engagement?

 

Our survey results below (see bottom section) show that 100% of respondents in immigration law are experiencing moral injury. If this is the case, even using the most conservative estimates of percentage attrition driven by moral injury, the associated and preventable costs are significant.

The big news this month has been the publication of Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report. Don't have time to read it in full? We've pulled out the key points related to engagement and productivity in the UK:

 

💡 Engagement in the UK remains low, with just 10% of employees positive engaged with their role. For comparison this is lower than some countries that experienced extreme sociopolitical and economic disruption last year e.g.:  

Ukraine = 18%; Israel = 21%; Iran = 12%; Venezuela = 31%.  

This matters because engagement is strongly linked to productivity and profitability at the business-unit level.

 

💡 Perhaps more striking is that manager engagement dropped from 27% to 22% in a single year, meaning they are now “only as engaged as those they lead”. This is the primary driving factor for overall engagement and productivity issues, due to the significance of the impact leadership has on team culture and performance.

 

💡 Gallup also highlights something directly relevant to this newsletter: engagement increases when employees find their work meaningful, beneficial to others, and aligned with a sense of choice. In other words, when people experience their work as intrinsically worthwhile, engagement and wellbeing rise, and when they don’t, both fall.

 

The link back to moral injury is straightforward. Where people are repeatedly working through unresolved ethical conflicts, that sense of meaning, alignment, and agency is eroded. And if managers themselves are disengaged, their capacity to notice, support, or challenge those dynamics is reduced. The result is not just a wellbeing issue, it’s a compounding people risk at team and organisational level.