Quiet Quitting

Understaffed, burned-out, and years of long hours have all led to employees quiet quitting.

“Quiet quitting” is an old behavior with an updated name. Is your work environment where people want to go the extra mile? Indications show that quiet quitting is usually not just about an employee’s willingness to work hard, more creatively, and for longer hours, but more about a manager’s talent in building a relationship with their employees so that they are not watching the clock until the end of the workday.

We all decide each day: How much effort are you planning to give your organization at the beginning of the day? Or are you planning to offer just enough effort necessary to keep your job?

Last year, and even the first few weeks of this year, those who choose the latter are identified as “quiet quitters.” They dismiss the idea that their work is the center of their daily life. They refuse the belief of giving everything and working long hours. They avoid requests to go above and beyond what they believe should be expected of an employee.

To understand the quiet quitting trend, we must ask ourselves what differs between those who view work as a priority that gives them purpose versus those who are going through the motions.

Quiet quitting is frequently more about a manager’s skill to build relationships with employees and less about an employee’s motivation to work hard and creatively to where they are not thinking of quitting throughout the workday.

Employee Perspective

It is expected that at some point in your career, you will or have worked for a manager that turned you toward a quiet quitting mindset. Feeling underrated and unacknowledged leads to this.

Maybe a manager was biased, or they engaged in inappropriate behavior. A dip in an employee’s motivation is usually credited to a manager’s actions.

Many employees have also worked for a manager who was motivated to work hard and grind to accomplish organizational goals and objectives. Therefore, sporadically work late hours or have early mornings and do not resent their manager who inspired them.

How to Manage a “Quiet Quitter”

If you have employees you suspect quietly quitting, ask yourself whether the problem is with your direct reports or an issue with you and your leadership skills.

If you are self-confident in your leadership skills and only one of your employees is unmotivated, the issue may not be yours. Even the best managers have direct reports that are quietly quitting.

Regardless, take an honest look at your motivational approach to obtain results from your team members. When asking your employees for elevated productivity, do you go the extra mile to ensure your team members feel valuable? Conducting open and honest dialogue with your colleagues about expectations of one another can make all the difference.

Trust is the most crucial consideration. When employees wholeheartedly trust their leader, they also believe their employer genuinely cares about their well-being.

Workplace trust can be linked to three behaviors:

First, creating positive relationships with your employees. Meaning you genuinely look forward to connecting with them. Common interests make it easy to build relationships. Those employees with whom you do not have common interests can lead to more challenging relationships. We can attribute this to age, ethnicity, gender, or political affiliation. Seek out and discover common ground with these employees to help build trust.

The second is reliability. Leaders should always be completely honest and deliver on promises. Leaders believe they are more reliable than others recognize them to be.

The third behavior in building trust is expertise. Are you well-versed and knowledgeable in your field? Have you needed to catch up on current trends? Is your advice valued? Experienced managers provide transparency, a clear path to accomplish goals, and a vision for building trust.

When building trust within an organization, the likelihood of quietly quitting is minimized considerably. The approach of yesteryear cannot be the same in today’s day in age. We must build welcoming, inclusive, safe, and positive workplaces.

It is easy to point a finger and blame lazy or unmotivated workers for quiet quitting. Team members wish to give their time, energy, positivity, and creativity to managers and organizations they feel deserve it.