September 6, 2022 by 
First, there was the “great resignation.” But now, there is a new workplace trend rapidly spreading across the country: quiet quitting. In fact, the term is going viral on social media, particularly on Tik Tok, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Quiet quitting isn’t necessarily about resigning from your job altogether. Instead, it is simply about just doing the bare minimum amount of work in your job. Other related definitions of quiet quitting include:
- Just doing enough to get by and placing a pause on the idea of going above and beyond.
- Managers are recognizing that employees are tired of being asked to “do more with less,” without being given commensurate compensation and/or recognition.
- Employees are eschewing working overtime and are instead prioritizing the bare work minimum requirements.
According to a 2022 study, fully 21% of workers say they only do the bare minimum.¹ Another 5% say they do even less than what they are expected and paid to do.¹ Astoundingly, 33% of the survey respondents say they have reduced their weekly work hours by more than 50%.¹
There is no doubt that the over two-year-old pandemic significantly accelerated the quiet quitting movement. In fact, four million people in the United States quit their job in June² forcing managers to ask remaining employees to take on the tasks and duties of these former coworkers. Furthermore, war and climate change have also heightened the uncertainty fueling the quiet quitting trend. Literally tens of millions of people that went above and beyond over time, but especially during the pandemic, received no reward or recognition for that. As such, these very employees clearly concluded there is absolutely no incentive to exceed expectations.
Many workplace experts believe that the quiet quitting movement demonstrates that many bosses are out of touch and are still expecting their employees to “do more with less.”
So, what are specific steps you and your organization can take to combat the quiet quitting trend? Here are 5 effective tips for doing so:
1. Educate your managers.
Teach them that they cannot keep dumping more work on existing employees without seeing heightened employee burnout and disengagement.
2. Redouble your recruiting efforts for new qualified employees.
Needless to say, adding new quality team members will lighten the workload for existing employees.
3. Conduct regular salary surveys to ensure that your pay is competitive, especially as it relates to the existing workload for each job position.
4. Revisit your organization’s Work/Life balance initiatives.
Place special emphasis on the all-important initiatives on fun and fitness.
5. Regularly perform confidential employee opinion surveys.
Receiving regular employee feedback will allow you and your team to directly address the underlying causes of employee turnover, disengagement, and quiet quitting.
Sources:
1 ResumeBuilder.com, 2022
2 Business Insider, 2022