Quiet quitting doesn’t involve quitting a place of employment, rather, it is a response to the hustle and bustle of the corporate culture. Sometimes called burnout, employees are unwilling to exceed expectations and decline to do additional tasks without verbal or financial acknowledgment.
Instead of resigning, some employees are simply quietly quitting. It’s a term that hit social media late summer and has grown popular on platforms such as TikTok. Bloomberg titled quiet quitting “a fake workplace trend” due to its sudden popularity thanks to social media. (1)
The concept of worker disengagement isn’t new, however. It’s been around for decades, if not longer. Whether workers quietly quitting is a trend or not, there is no question that disengaged or unhappy workers are the greatest nemesis of productive and effective organizations.
What is “quiet quitting”?
Some describe quiet quitting in two words – “worker burnout.”
A more thorough explanation: Employees who take the approach of doing minimal day-to-day activities to pass the litmus test of doing their job but aren’t invested in their work, the company they work for, and often the relationships with the people around them (e.g., leaders, managers, co-workers, vendors, customers) are described as a quiet quitter. They work exactly the hours they have been hired to do – nothing more. (e.g., won’t stay later or come in early, don’t take work home to be completed, don’t answer calls, or respond to text or email messages if it isn’t within working hours, won’t attend activities that aren’t mandatory, etc.)
Watch this 17-second TikTok video by user Zaid Khan (2) for the social media definition of quiet quitting.
How frequent is it?
According to Gallup, quiet quitters make up 50% of the workforce. Other workers are either engaged (32%) or actively disengaged (18%). (3)
Actively disengaged employees are “loud quitters,” unhappy, and tend to see their workplace needs as unmet. They spread their dissatisfaction. In fact, they have been the most vocal in TikTok posts that have generated millions of views and comments. (3)
Why is quiet quitting problematic?
Quiet quitters are employees that fly under the radar of detection. They are doing what is expected and the tasks assigned to them. They just aren’t willing to do more or go the extra mile to get things done.
Quiet quitting is a form of employee disengagement. Employees who aren’t engaged are expensive. Gallup’s 2022 State of the Global Workforce Report found that disengaged workers cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity. (4)
Quiet quitting is like an iceberg. Things look fine on the surface but below lurks serious issues. The burden on the organization of any employee who doesn’t engage is a large-scale problem.
Employee engagement IS a competitive advantage. Engaged employees help organizations achieve: (5)
- Ten percent higher customer loyalty/engagement
- Twenty-three percent higher profitability
- Eight percent to fourteen percent higher productivity
- Eighteen percent to forty-three percent lower turnover
Co-workers take on extra work because disengaged workers aren’t willing to pull their fair share. This can create interpersonal conflicts, siloed departments, communication issues, plus increased employee churn among workers who have had enough of unbalanced workloads, unaddressed company culture problems, etc.
Disengaged employees lack attentiveness. Every employee is responsible, regardless of their job title, role, and job duties, to create an experience with customers and other key stakeholders. It’s not just customer-facing roles responsible for how a customer or other stakeholder feels about an organization. Here are a few examples of how disengaged employees impact the stakeholder-organization relationship:
- Sales and support are insufficient such as due diligence, knowledge, or subject expertise
- Marketing and sales messages don’t connect with prospects
- Lack of ideas and innovation, or problem-solving
- Problems with agility and crisis management
- Issues with product development from design through production
- Gross mistakes, errors, or omissions that are frequently repeated
- Customer service and brand reputation are impacted
Quiet quitters often aren’t just giving up on their jobs. They are giving up in general. This may signal underlying problems (e.g., relationships, finance, health/wellness, etc.) and job discontentment that may require professional intervention.
What Triggers Quiet Quitting?
Quiet quitters can be easily identified, but it’s important to understand why they are dissociating from work to motivate them. Some reasons may include:
#1 Bad Bosses
Organizations like to think quiet quitting is something unique to a specific employee. However, it’s less about employees and more about the people that lead them. The least effective managers have 3-4 times as many employees that fall into the “quiet quitting” category. (6) A single bad manager can lead to many quiet quitters.
Breaking down the data further:
- The least effective managers had 14% of their direct reports quietly quitting, and only 20% were willing to give extra effort.
- Highly effective managers had only 3% of their direct reports quietly quitting, and 62% were willing to give extra effort
#2 Psychological Contracts
In 1997, The Academy of Management Review published an article by Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison and Sandra L. Robinson. This addressed the concept of psychological contracts and the impact they had on employees in the workplace. They wrote: “The psychological contract held by an employee consists of beliefs about the reciprocal obligations between that employee and their organization. Violation refers to the feelings of anger and betrayal that are often experienced when an employee believes that the organization has failed to fulfill one or more of these obligations.” (7)
Years ago, it was easier for employers and organizations to manage their employees. Workers were expected to do a specific job during specific hours (or a particular number of hours) for a specified pay rate. The relationship between employees and the company they worked for was transactional – put in the hours and receive a paycheck. And if you were fortunate enough to be employed by the same company for an extended period, you received a pension upon retirement.
Over time organizations understood the value of developing relationships with all stakeholders. They expect employees to invest more time in learning, doing, and participating. In exchange, employees were offered opportunities for advancement, growth, and stronger connections with leaders, peers, and other stakeholders. Therefore, the relationship between employees and the organization became relational.
But it’s become a one-way street – or at least that’s the perception for many employees. This has resulted in the mentality that if organizations want more, they need to offer more. They need to see employees as more than just bodies who complete required tasks but also as individuals with unique traits and motivations.
- Boomers (1946-1963) and Gen X (1965-1980) employees expect feedback in a monetary and tangible form, which is substantial and not frivolous.
- Millennials/Gen Y (1980-1995) want their value to be acknowledged.
- Gen Z (1997-2015) employees want feedback and personal growth opportunities.
Another factor to consider is compensation for current employees. New hires are being paid more than existing employees. According to Nadine Evans of Employment Benefit News, “U.S. employers are offering more lucrative deals to attract and secure the talent they need, both in terms of salary and workplace perks. While this means great opportunities for workers in transition who are looking to fill new roles, existing employees may question why their compensation doesn’t equal that of new recruits. These employees are well within their rights to take issue with staff being brought in at their level and earning more money.” Read more about how to minimize staff shortages here (8)
#3 Conflicting Priorities
Wealth and rising on the corporate ladder are not interests the younger generations wish to pursue. (9) They place importance on health/wellness, relationships, experiences, and learning over “living to work.” Many employees are quietly going back to more of a transactional relationship. (e.g., “I do my job based on the standards required for X pay during these hours/for this set number of hours per week, and nothing more.”)
#4 Putting Up Boundaries
Some employees may have been highly productive, efficient, and effective when first hired. But along the way, they felt compelled to establish boundaries for whatever reason, be it organizational, leadership, or peer-related. Examples of reasons why boundaries may be instilled may include:
- Expectations that employees are available 24/7/365
- Demanding and sometimes hostile workplaces
- Lack of recognition
- Management playing favorites
- Use personal items belonging to employees for business purposes (e.g., mobile phone, computer, etc.)
- Micro-management
Managers must go out of their way to ensure team members feel valued when they ask their direct reports for increased productivity. Open and honest dialogue with colleagues about each party’s expectations of the other goes a long way.
The most principal factor in dealing with your employees to prevent them from becoming a quiet quitter is trust. Top leaders balance results with their concern for team members, and trust was the number one behavior that helped. When direct reports trusted their leader, they also assumed that the manager cared about them and was concerned about their wellbeing. (10)
Employees are more likely to engage when they feel both appreciated and respected. Workers need to feel valued and trusted. Healthy corporate cultures are essential to thriving workplaces and necessary to minimize quiet quitting.
READ Part 2 HERE
Group travel incentives are a powerful way to improve morale and keep teams engaged in company objectives. Contact Gavel International to learn more.
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SOURCE:
- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-27/quiet-quitting-lying-flat-great-resignation-what-these-fake-work-trends-mean?leadSource=uverify%20wall
- https://www.tiktok.com/@zaidleppelin/video/7124414185282391342
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/398306/quiet-quitting-real.aspx
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/393497/world-trillion-workplace-problem.aspx
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/321725/gallup-q12-meta-analysis-report.aspx
- https://hbr.org/2022/08/quiet-quitting-is-about-bad-bosses-not-bad-employees
- https://doi.org/10.2307/259230
- https://www.gavelintl.com/the-meeting-planners-guide-to-minimize-staff-shortages/
- https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/09/13/1122059402/the-economics-behind-quiet-quitting-and-what-we-should-call-it-instead
- https://hbr.org/2022/08/quiet-quitting-is-about-bad-bosses-not-bad-employees
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