What is “Quiet Quitting?” – Understanding The New Viral Term.

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 

 

Kevin Sheridan is an internationally-recognized Keynote Speaker, a New York Times Best Selling Author, and one of the most sought-after voices in the world on the topic of Employee Engagement. For five years running, he has been honored on Inc. Magazine’s top 100 Leadership Speakers in the world, as well as Inc.’s top 100 experts on Employee Engagement. He was also honored to be named to The Employee Engagement Award’s Top 101 Global Influencers on Employee Engagement of 2017.

Having spent thirty years as a high-level Human Capital Management consultant, Kevin has helped some of the world’s largest corporations rebuild a culture that fosters productive engagement, earning him several distinctive awards and honors. Kevin’s premier creation, PEER®, has been consistently recognized as a long-overdue, industry-changing innovation in the field of Employee Engagement. His first book, Building a Magnetic Culture, made six of the best seller lists including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He is also the author of The Virtual Manager, which explores how to most effectively manage remote workers.

Kevin received a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School in 1988, concentrating his degree in Strategy, Human Resources Management, and Organizational Behavior. He is also a serial entrepreneur, having founded and sold three different companies.

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Email: kevin@kevinsheridanllc.com