The conversation around quiet quitting has been rising steadily across organisations. Are employees putting their best foot forward in their everyday work? Why aren't they — and how can this growing issue be tackled?
Since Covid, 2022 was the year employee engagement and job opportunities surged globally, bringing us back to pre-pandemic levels of economic growth. While that is good news, global worker stress remained at a historic high, rising from 34% in 2011 to 44% in 2022.
The term quiet quitting, also known as the great resignation, refers to employees consistently putting in the bare minimum to keep their jobs without going the extra mile. Some indicators include:
- Not speaking up in meetings
- Not volunteering for tasks
- Refusing extra work
- Being regularly late
- Increasing absenteeism
- Presenting substandard work
- Bad attitude at work
According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report, 59% of the workforce is quietly quitting. More often than not, this trend has been attributed to employees not feeling engaged and experiencing high stress at work.
What does this mean from the employee perspective?
A quiet quitter psychologically disconnects from their organisation. Although they remain minimally productive, they are more likely to be stressed and burnt out than engaged workers, from feeling lost and disengaged.
A lack of company culture, work-life balance, and poor management are the leading causes of employee disengagement. The hustle culture mentality — the "no-off days" narrative for climbing the corporate ladder — forces employees to devote everything to work without having their own needs met. This eats into mental health and pushes people away from the goals and mission of the organisation.
Gallup reports that 6 in 10 workers do not feel driven to achieve more than the minimum. These dissatisfied workers produce a long list of ripple effects: decreased productivity, lack of enthusiasm, increased absenteeism, and a loss of innovation, ownership and initiative — all deeply damaging to any organisation.
What does this mean from the employer perspective?
For an employer, a disengaged employee has an exponentially larger effect on the organisation. With barely-there effort, there are countless lost opportunities and untapped potential in the work produced.
Gallup's report estimates that low engagement costs organisations 8.8 trillion USD, accounting for 9% of global GDP. On an organisational level, unhappy employees are not brand advocates. They may generate negative press on social platforms, through employee reviews, or simply through word of mouth, all of which can have serious effects on company reputation.
How is employee engagement and quiet quitting related?
Employee engagement covers the day-to-day workplace activities and interactions that encourage positive emotions and experiences, and allow for learning and growth. It goes beyond what a job description states. How engaged someone is remains the biggest indicator of their productivity, wellbeing, and experience at work.
How do we change this?
Gallup states that quiet quitters are often your greatest opportunity for growth and change. With 41% of the workforce wanting to change organisational culture, a lot can be done that does not necessarily involve increasing pay and benefits. A good place to start is looking internally.
Engaged teams are significantly more productive and profitable than disengaged ones. People want to be appreciated, included, and respected — outcomes that depend on good leadership and a better workplace experience. This starts with stakeholders and management.
Gallup states that 70% of engagement improvements depend on managers and leaders. Since managers and leaders are also the leading cause of high stress rates at work, this is the best place to begin.
Some practical starting points:
- Recognising teams and individuals for their contributions
- Being more approachable and open to communication across levels
- Granting more autonomy in work to stimulate creativity
- Giving everyone a fair chance at promotion
- Setting clear goals and providing stronger guidance
- Listening to and respecting employees' concerns
- Setting boundaries that support a genuine work-life balance
Equipping leaders to manage a changing workforce builds a more productive team that feels valued and recognised. Management should create more space for open conversations with their teams to ensure employees feel genuinely engaged.
Conclusion
Engage your employees in meaningful ways and they become the organisation's strongest advocates. While engagement is a good mitigator of stress and quiet quitting, it does not solve everything on its own. Employees may still be disengaged if not attended to individually. Reaching out to an underperforming employee to understand their situation more closely is important, and it has to be a leadership-led initiative to work.
Employee experience is one thing and performance is another. See how behavioural technology drives performance and service excellence here.
