A new trend known as “quiet quitting” has emerged in recent months. Quiet quitters are employees who begin to do the bare minimum at work, satisfying themselves with just getting by, and not showing any eagerness or desire to do more, do better, or even be there.
The trend has been encouraged by social media personalities who view it as a healthy way to take back control of an individual’s work-life balance and to set better boundaries between themselves and their employer. Often, it’s encouraged as an antidote to burnout and a way of empowering workers to take back control of the self.
Unfortunately, for both employers and the quiet quitters themselves, this approach has considerable drawbacks. Quiet quitting risks lowering an individual’s sense of personal accomplishment, and by discouraging engagement can have a detrimental impact on a person’s workplace relationships. This could lead to a loss of purpose and satisfaction and leave people feeling like their role is ultimately meaningless. When someone lacks motivation and engagement, it becomes a lot easier for them to adopt a negative view of their own life.
From an employer’s point of view, the quiet quitters can be disruptive. People who aren’t engaged with their work are less likely to show initiative, they’re disinclined to provide input during meetings, and they can become a morale-sapping influence on the rest of the team.
If leaders suspect a member of their team is quiet quitting, it’s important that they address the situation quickly but empathetically. Happy people do not quiet quit.
Depression and Mental Health Concerns
Those who have experience with mental health conditions such as depression know that motivation often plummets during particularly low moments. Right now, it shouldn’t be hard to understand why many people, including those who have never previously shown signs of depression, might be feeling particularly low right now. Having only just navigated a difficult pandemic period which impacted people’s ability to see loved ones and, in many tragic cases, cost the lives of friends and relatives, lingering feelings of loss and grief are to be expected.
Furthermore, the cost-of-living crisis has provided many of us with nothing but a parade of bleak news. From the rising costs of essentials such as food to the forthcoming winter of discontent, it’s not hard to understand why many of our people might struggle with depression, anxiety, and stress.
As leaders, we must demonstrate our understanding of this situation. Although there is no single approach to assisting those suffering from mental health problems, we can consider various options. We can provide extra break periods, we can encourage flexible working, we can delegate more effectively so that our people are not overwhelmed, and we may even be able to investigate providing support and counselling services if possible.
Where finances support it, we may even be able to provide some emergency cost-of-living bonuses to our people who are really struggling right now, or at the very least, find some way to lighten the financial load ahead of them.
Overburdening
Most leaders are guilty of overburdening certain individuals from time to time. We have those people in our organisation whose skills or abilities lend themselves to being given extra tasks. When someone like that starts quiet quitting, it may be that we’ve overburdened them and given them too big a load to work with.
If this is the case, it’s time we start looking at why we’re giving so much work to certain people. If it’s due to a lack of people capable of doing that job, perhaps it’s time we started investing in training to equip more people with the desired skillset. If it’s because we regularly find ourselves hitting “crunch” periods, then we need to investigate our time management skills and delegate tasks more efficiently.
Overburdening is almost always the fault of leadership. It’s something we can and should address ourselves as a priority so that we don’t lose the talents of good people.
Lack of Challenge
When your job amounts to doing the same thing every day, it’s difficult to stay motivated. Some quiet quitters do the bare minimum because they spend most of the day on autopilot, inputting the same data or running through the same scripted conversations with customers.
If we want these people to remain motivated and engaged, we need to vary their work and give them something that challenges but does not overburden them. Again, training could help. If we equip people with new skills, we can provide the opportunity to put them to good use. Where we cannot train people for a different role, perhaps we can look at other ways of including them. We could, for example, encourage them to provide more input, or we could afford them other opportunities to do something a little different to the norm.
Be Forthcoming with Praise
We’ve all had that moment where we’ve done something that warrants recognition, and we don’t get it. It leaves us feeling frustrated, irritable, underappreciated, and unhappy.
Many leaders seem to be under the impression that it’s not necessary to comment on a job well done because somebody has just done their job. This is a horrendously bad management technique that should be confined to the dustbin of history.
People like to be praised when they’ve done a good job. It stimulates the striatum in the brain and releases dopamine—often known as the pleasure hormone. Research has indicated that receiving praise improves our physical and mental well-being. We get a better night’s sleep, and during that sleep, our brain engages in what’s known as “skill consolidation” because praise is a form of social reward which improves our learning and understanding.
Every time you praise somebody for a job well done, you’re not only giving them a reason to keep doing a good job, but you’re helping them in several other ways. The same applies to simple gestures such as a “thank you” or handing someone a £10 gift card because they closed a big sale.
Yes, your people might just be doing their jobs, but if they’re doing their jobs well, then you need to show appreciation for it. If you don’t, you have nobody to blame but yourself when they quietly quit on you.
Leave Your Door Open
Most importantly, we must ensure our door is open to our people. It’s all too easy for an employee to start viewing the boss as unapproachable. To stay in their little corner of the office, do their work, and go home feeling unnoticed and unappreciated.
Take some time out of your day to wander around the office and engage with your people—not just about work but about life and interests. If you make yourself approachable, people will be willing to approach you when they have a concern or a problem, and the first step in fixing any problem is identifying that there is one.
Go the Extra Mile
Ultimately, it often boils down to trust. A leader who is willing to go the extra mile for their people is a leader who will encourage their people to go the extra mile for them.
If you’re concerned that your people might be quiet quitting, then contact us and we can help you tailor a programme to Raise the Engagement Bar.
