‘Quiet Quitting’: Why the Business World’s Phrase of the Year Doesn’t Get the Story Right

Jim Detert just wants to set the record straight.

Darden’s John L. Colley Professor of Business Administration has spent the last few years reading about a couple of trendy terms in the business world that are really just describing long-standing realities.

“We have suddenly started to use new buzzwords for phenomena that have actually been around for decades,” Detert said.

“Quiet quitting,” a term describing disengaged workers who tackle only the minimum requirements at their jobs, is among the hottest buzzwords in the business world. It was named the phrase of the year in 2022 by The Morning Brew, a daily newsletter designed for young business professionals.

But, Detert said, “We’ve had terrible employee engagement in this country for a long time, well before Gallup started its annual reporting on it in 2000. For more than 50 years, organizational scholars have been documenting why employees are disengaged, why employees have low job satisfaction, why they ‘quit on the job,’ and why they actually do quit.”

Detert says one way to improve the trend is to stop using the term “quiet quitting” and instead call it what it most often is: “calibrated contributing.”

“It’s generally not a compliment to be called a quitter. It’s not neutral. So when we use the term ‘quiet quitting,’ we’re essentially putting the blame on employees. We’re saying they’re lazy, not committed, or behaving selfishly or irrationally,” said Detert, an expert in leadership and organizational behavior. “In many instances, though, employees choosing to fulfill their job description — but no more — are behaving quite rationally. They’re rejecting endless job creep, where they do more and more but don’t see an equivalent increase in their pay, status, fulfilling work or basic respect. They’re simply trying to restore a sense of equity at work — a sense that what they put in matches what they get out.”

Detert wants to describe the phenomenon in a more accurate way with a less derogatory connotation. The author of Choosing Courage: The Everyday Guide to Being Brave at Work believes replacing the term “quiet quitting” with “calibrated contributing” can change the focus and lead to real improvements at the workplace.

“If managers can acknowledge that calibrated contributing is, in many cases, rational behavior in response to the terms of employment they’re offering, then they can start to own the responsibility to do something productive about it,” Detert said. “That might involve improving factors like pay levels and benefits. Or changing some core job characteristics, like granting more autonomy in regard to when and where people work or making people’s work more interesting by expanding its variety or scope of responsibility. Or getting serious about measuring and holding people accountable — including managers and others with high status — for how they treat each other interpersonally.”

Detert said there are countless studies that show how a boss treats an employee and how co-workers treat each other are massive influences on job satisfaction and quitting. Those studies indicate the focus should be on, “What are we doing that’s causing this?” And, then, “How do we get serious about fixing this?’”

What Caused ‘Quiet Quitting’ to Take Off in the Public Consciousness?

The New Yorker in its 2022 Year in Review described the rise of quiet quitting as a phenomenon. Starting with a bang on TikTok in July 2022, the term quickly took hold on major print and broadcast media outlets, often often pitting the mostly younger defenders of the principles behind quiet quitting on TikTok against older media pundits who decried the trend as a sign of laziness in young workers.

In Gallup’s survey on employee engagement, Generation Z workers were the least engaged of any age-based demographic.

“There’s always a general tension between owners — and the managers who work for them — and nonmanagement employees of all types in terms of who has control over the conditions of work and who gets more or less of the profits that are produced,” Detert said. “We know that, starting in the 1970s and ’80s, in this country, we have moved toward a much greater share of the spoils going to those at the very top.”

In the United States, attitudinal shifts among those in power, globalization, declining union rates, unequal income distributions, one of the lowest federal minimum wages of any advanced economy and a relatively weak social safety net have all contributed to people feeling less secure and question what they’re getting for all their hard work, Detert said.

So, it’s not surprising that, at some point, workers pushed back.

“What I think happened was the pandemic essentially triggered this breaking point,” Detert said. “I think the pandemic, coupled with decades of things going in the wrong direction for the average employee, led to this recalibration.”

Tips for Employees and Employers

When an employee's efforts to have legitimate complaints addressed go unheeded, Detert believes reducing effort on the job is a defensible response.

However, if an employee never makes an attempt to address the sources of their dissatisfaction, they deny others the chance to improve. So, Detert recommends employees don’t give less without asking the other side to give more first.

“Be clear in your mind about the features of your job that don’t work for you before you determine you’re going to reduce your effort or quit,” Detert said. “At least consider an honest conversation with your boss about what they could change to address core problems, whether those are things like pay, benefits or your work schedule or aspects that affect whether you’re really engaged with your work or feel like you’re a respected part of a high-functioning team.”

As for managers who might sense calibrated contributing among younger employees, Detert said they should remember that the basic needs of humans remain the same across generations. Humans seek belonging, autonomy, and a sense of control, basic safety and self respect. They have a desire to contribute to something bigger than themselves.

“If you, as a manager, are finding yourself saying, ‘Oh, these people today,’ what you probably should be doing is saying, ‘Humans are humans. What’s wrong with the type of work we’re offering, the type of working environment we’re offering? What do we need to do to improve?’” Detert said. “My advice to management is to take a long, hard look at the underlining causes of dissatisfaction among their people, and then do something meaningful about them.”

Using terms like “calibrated contributing” rather than “quiet quitting” is a good start because it acknowledges the legitimate concerns of employees and the need for productive managerial responses.