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If you’ve been on LinkedIn within the past 1-2 weeks, chances are you’ve heard about “Quiet Quitting.” If you’re like me, the term first made you picture someone silently packing up their desk and tiptoeing out of the office, careful to not disturb the peace or tell anyone where they’re going. Or maybe, more realistically, you thought about an employee working from home who simply decides to close their laptop, never to be heard from again.
Well it turns out, these ideas are not even close to accurate, and that quiet quitting is actually not about quitting at all. The term, which has been met with everything from support to confusion to backlash, actually refers to employees who decide to stop doing anything that’s not strictly within the scope of their job description.
Simply put: workers are doing precisely what the company pays them to do, and giving nothing more (physically or emotionally) than that.
As an HR leader, you may have some questions. What does quiet quitting look like? Is it even a bad thing? How should we address it? Let’s dive into all that and more.
Before we dive in, it’s important to note that the reason behind this change in behavior varies within each organization. But commonly, quiet quitting seems to be a response to the immense change and uncertainty we’ve all faced over the last few years. The pandemic has forced many employees to completely change the way that they work, practically overnight.
The ability to work from home (whether full time or a few days per week) may seem like it’s given employees a higher degree of freedom, but boundaries between work and home have become blurred. For workers with the added responsibility of family obligations, childcare, or homeschooling, this has hit especially hard.
Even before the pandemic, the glorification of the 24/7 work culture was already taking its toll, with workers burning out at an alarming rate. Within the hustle culture we've been living in, the lines between what's considered "essential" and "not essential" have constantly been shifting. With the pressure to be productive at all times, many workers feel they can't take a break without repercussions, so they end up burning out. For example, when workers are in the office, they may take a 15 minute walk with a coworker to go pick up lunch, but when working from home, many feel that if they are “inactive” on Slack or Teams for 15 minutes in the middle of the day, people will view them in a negative light. This fear leads to many individuals working from home sitting at their desks all day, working longer hours with less breaks.
At the same time, many companies are struggling to adapt to the new landscape and find their footing. Reorganizations and restructuring are becoming more common as businesses try to survive in an increasingly competitive market. With many organizations resorting to mass layoffs, the workers left behind may feel insecure in their jobs and feel they need to shoulder larger workloads.
With all this change happening around them, it's no wonder that employees are feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and emotionally exhausted.
With our culture’s focus on mental health and wellbeing, many employees are starting to see the sign of burnout in themselves, and are “quiet quitting” to take back control of their time, energy, and mental wellness.
For HR leaders, addressing this concept can feel a bit confusing—after all, if you’ve hired workers to do all the tasks your company needs, and they do just that, there shouldn’t be a gap, right?
But there are two real issues at hand.
The first is that quite simply, employees might be going above and beyond their job descriptions without HR even noticing. The reality is that while many organizations have a company culture, a smaller, more unique culture typically exists within each team at an organization as well. These niche cultures within an organization come with their own set of expectations, pressure, and challenges.
The second issue is much harder to measure—it’s the psychological pressure that many employees feel but haven’t outwardly addressed (think: I’m worried to go for a 15 minute walk when I’m working from home because if my coworkers see my status as “away” they will think I’m slacking at my job). This has only been exacerbated by many organization’s recent reductions in force, and employees feeling like they need to shoulder additional work left by past coworkers.
While you may feel like your employees are not “quiet quitting” because on paper they’re doing everything within their job description, it’s important to remember that much of this concept is an emotional quitting or letting go. It’s indicative of a problem much larger than work distribution—it is evidence of burnout, dissatisfaction, anxiety, and overall unhappiness.
The first step? Look for these signs of burnout in employees:
The second step is to recognize that this may be a problem at your organization. It might not seem like a big deal at first, but if left unchecked, quiet quitting can have a serious impact on your employee’s mental and physical wellness. Plus, if employees are feeling burnt out and not productive, it can have negative effects on the business as well.
Here are a few things you can do to prevent burnout and quiet quitting from taking over:
When it comes to quiet quitting, it's important to remember that above all, it’s really a workplace mental health and wellness issue. The environment, energy, and boundaries you establish within your company’s workplace (whether that be a virtual, in person, or hybrid) are so important when it comes to making employees feel valued, healthy, and productive. This will bolster your retention efforts and ensure your employees won’t feel like they need to emotionally resign from work.