Quiet quitting has been gaining traction among the younger generations and since going viral on TikTok has been making its way around the world of work. Today we’re going to take a dive into the phenomenon of quiet quitting, the wider factors in the world of work and society that contribute to quiet quitting, and how we may reduce quiet quitting in the workplace.

What is Quiet Quitting?

Quiet quitting has less to do with employees leaving their jobs without notice, and more about how an employee perceives the job they do. To quit quietly is to go against the old norm of ‘hustle culture’ where a person puts in work above and beyond their pay grade or job description in the hopes of being seen as a valuable member of the team and receive the extra benefits thereof.

To quit quietly is to stay within the strictest terms and definitions of a job role and to never exceed or go beyond them. This can take on a lot of forms depending on the nature of the business but may include things such as working only within the set hours, turning down extra tasks and responsibilities, and only carrying out the tasks that are essential to the job’s needs.

Why is it happening?

Anyone who has worked long hours for no extra pay, spent more time giving to a business or place of work than their own life, or simply ever worked for an employer who does not value or care about them, will have a kinship with quiet quitting.

One of the common arguments employers may want to make is that it is a lazier younger generation who are simply refusing to put in the work and effort their parents and grandparents once put into their own careers. But is this really the case? Every generation has its challenges, and every person has their needs. If the challenges a person face exceeds the needs that are being met, then that person has lots to do and very little support, time or energy to do it in.

The more a person continues to meet those challenges (work place and life included), whilst receiving little help, support or encouragement from those around them, the more tired, apathetic and disengaged a person becomes.

We may look at the wider world, though we shall only do so briefly here, but a lot of us are born into this world, and asked to contribute to it, within the limits and definitions already set by those who come before us. When a person steps up into the adult working world, they are often trying to find something that is meaningful and fulfilling, as well as supportive enough to allow them a modicum of comfort and freedom in their own life.

From the wars on terrors, to economic collapse, climate crisis, COVID-19, and now even the energy crisis that is sweeping our world, a rational person will be asking themselves, what am I doing this for?

Does this job support me? Does it fulfil me? Does it make me happy? Does it make me feel valued? Does my boss/employer acknowledge the work I do for them? Do they show and demonstrate to me that they care?

The world is changing, and as people we are changing. Material goods line our streets, our shops and our homes, more money and more stuff is easy enough to come by. It is how we feel, how strong and healthy we are mentally and emotionally that really matters to us now.

And so, if in any given environment we do not feel valued, the environment itself doesn’t feel joyous and uplifting, if it mentally drains and taxes us and never offers us the break we need from it, we quietly and deliberately disengage.

So, taking this into account and recognising that your business probably already provides materially for its employees, we need to see employees as more than another material, product, or object of labour in our business and see them for the fully embodied human beings that they are with complex emotional and mental needs, as well as physical ones.

How do we change/challenge Quiet Quitting?

Listening

To begin with most employees have not, and will not, simply resort to quiet quitting out of the blue. Quiet quitting occurs after problems have been raised, needs have been requested and managers and employers have failed to listen or rectify the problems. Though we like to think of ourselves as stoic unfeeling adults, the truth is quite the opposite. We are filled with emotion, agency and desire. If a desire isn’t met after it has been voiced, it diminishes our trust in that person, our care towards that person and our desire to do anything for that person, especially when that person is in a role of responsibility or care to us.

In your own personal world as an employer, if anyone in your life ignores yours needs repeatedly, dismisses them as fanciful, extravagant or unnecessary, when inside you know it be a simple basic need, then you are very quickly going to disengage with that person and cease to listen to them.

So, we begin by listening, seeing where the problems are, and addressing them for each employee, making changes to the way the business works so that your employees have everything they need to do the work they need to do to their best standards.

Empathising

Sometimes it can be hard to break down our barriers and biases, we may have worked our way up the corporate ladder using hard work, dedication and going above and beyond. You may look at your quietly quitting employees and not understand why they are acting this way, and seek to blame it on them.

So, take time to sit in their shoes. You know how many hours they work, what that work entails and how much they get paid for it. You may also be aware that money doesn’t go as far as it once did, and so you can take that into account and sit in your employee’s shoes for a while, and ask yourself how you would feel if you worked in the same environment. You may find pretty quickly that you would like to change a lot about your workplace.

Setting Boundaries

As you listen and empathise, you will begin to see that a lot of employees are really asking for the bare minimum, that minimum being clear boundaries. Often a person might feel compelled to continue answering e-mails or work calls outside of their paid hours, and may, over time, begin to see less and less free time with no extra reward.

Other employees may feel obliged to work overtime for fear of losing their job if they refuse, even though they’ve already given you all they had that week.

We often step into a job and expect one set of conditions, and our contracts may even state those conditions, and yet whilst in the work place our management gives us extra tasks and responsibilities we did not want or anticipate, and we become stuck, do we refuse our new manager and risk our job? Or do we create a boundary and say we have been hired to perform a certain function, and we are not being pushed to perform beyond that function.

As an employee, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. You can either refuse your employer and risk the job you need for your own survival, or listen to an overzealous boss and take on a work load that damages your own mental and emotional, and even physical, wellbeing.

As an employer then, you can set those boundaries for them. Create clear set times, clear workloads, and make all overtime and responsibilities optional. In this way every employee knows where they stand the day they begin working, and know what can be refused and what cannot.

This in itself will give an employee focus and direction and a sense of fair and equal exchange, doing this work for this pay, no more, no less.

Fair Pay & Rewards

As we know, the world of work isn’t simple and static, and yes businesses need to adapt to having less employee’s than needed due to sickness or holiday, or if the season is busier than usual. Extra tasks crop up and someone needs to do the work. It’s normal and reasonable to expect that your workforce do jobs beyond what they’d set out to do, but what’s important from an employee’s perspective is to be rewarded and compensated fairly for it.

If you ask an employee to work overtime, pay them extra for overtime. You’ll have more employees jumping at the chance than you will silently quitting and refusing to participate. If there’s extra work and responsibilities, and they are constant and regular, ensure the employee you ask to do it knows why you’re asking and that you value their skill and expertise. And ensure that they receive a title and pay increase that is appropriate for the extra load and work. And again, you’ll find employee’s responding with delight and exuberance rather than apathy and fatigue.

How Can Employee Reward Schemes Help Reduce Quiet Quitting?

Quiet quitting occurs due to employee’s feeling undervalued. We can value our employees by listening to their needs and rewarding and compensating them appropriately for extra work we give them, above and beyond their initial contract/job description.

Value: Value is our keyword here. Our sense of worth and value is what determines how each of us feels about ourselves, and how we feel about ourselves determines and decides what we do in the world.

Where we feel valued, we proudly step up and go above and beyond, enjoying the sense of worth it gives us. Where we feel undervalued, we diminish and fade into the background wondering why we ever bothered at all.

We have spent years curating and creating employee reward and recognition schemes to do just that. Our dream is to help other businesses create a thriving workplace, by installing reward and recognition procedures that are relevant to you. We follow our own advice and listen to our employees and to other business, and ensure that our reward schemes and recognition programs are maintained at all levels of the business and are consistently applied. In listening to our employees and wanting to offer value to them, we recognise that value is not a one-time offer, it is a consistent affair that builds up trust and loyalty. We are so sure that Loyalty Works that we named ourselves after that very statement, and we know that creating loyalty begins with creating value.

We inspire loyalty by respecting people for their contribution and offering them that sense of achievement all of us require to continue following our dreams and diving into our work. With tried and tested methods and bespoke schemes tailored directly to your business, allow us to help create rewards and recognition programs for your employees today, and you will see instances of quiet quitting drop dramatically in no time at all.

We hope you have learned all about quiet quitting, that some of these points have made you think and question practices within your own workplace, and we hope we have shown how adept we are at remedying this problem with years of expertise behind us.

For more information, get in touch with the Loyalty Works team.