Quiet Quitting

Quiet quitting. If you are in the business world, chances are you have wondered about this phrase. It doesn’t mean that you will arrive at the office one day to suddenly find empty desks and no employees.

Quiet quitting is an old problem, framed in a new way, that can indicate a wide range of employee issues. As an article in Forbes explains,

While these behaviors are not new, they are amplified in the current environment due to labor market disruption combined with employee coping and survival strategies resulting from exhaustion from the pandemic, economic and geopolitical uncertainty, severe staffing shortages, isolation from remote work, anxiety from returning to workplaces, reduced employee purchasing power caused by inflation, and dependent care challenges.

How does quiet quitting manifest itself? The Wall Street Journal reports that it shows up when “some young professionals reject the idea of going above and beyond in their careers, labeling their lesser enthusiasm a form of ‘quitting.’ It isn’t about getting off the company payroll, these employees say.” Quiet quitting can be understood as employees taking a paycheck, while putting in a minimal amount of effort, for a variety of reasons related to workplace issues and issues external to the workplace.

How widespread is the problem? Very, according to Gallup. From Bloomberg:

According to Gallup’s survey in June of over 15,000 full-time and part-time US workers, some 50% of respondents met the definition of quiet quitting, a term that has bubbled up to describe a prevalent worker mindset at a moment when the pandemic has upended employees’ priorities and companies’ workplace policies.

The study found that the share of engaged employees held steady at 32% and those who were actively disengaged rose to 18%, up from 17% at the beginning of the year.

So, employees in the workplace are doing the minimum they need to do at work, and there are many of them.

What is a manager or business owner to do?

MIT Sloan Management Review connected with experts, and discovered five steps that managers can take to proactively and productively address quiet quitting:

• Rebuild the Psychological Contract With Employees

• Foster Employee Voice Through Supportive Relationships

• Understand What It Means to Offer High-Quality Work

• Recognize and Show Respect for How Employees Have Changed

• Help Employees Rebuild Connections to Teammates and Culture

Quiet quitting can serve as an opportunity for businesses to examine how they are interacting with their employees, be responsive to employee concerns, and seek to understand the underlying causes of quiet quitting.

Understanding quiet quitting gives businesses and managers the chance to anticipate employee issues, and create a culture of communication with employees that can lead to better employee retention and improved productivity. Quiet quitting can be turned into quality outcomes, if managers can identify the signs of quiet quitting, and proactively address them.

One of the best ways we can combat employees not giving their all at work is to be diligent workers ourselves, to sanctify our labors, and to be understanding managers. In a word, our work can help us give good examples to others. Saint Josemaria Escriva taught that, “[p]rofessional work is also an apostolate, an opportunity to give ourselves to others, to reveal Christ to them and lead them to God the Father.”

Quiet quitting can give way to cheerful work that can lead us and others to God. Time to get to work!