Engaging the Quiet Quitters

“Quiet Quitting?” You know, where people stop working but still turn up and do just enough to get paid, but they never go above and beyond. Absolutely no discretionary effort.

Quiet quitting is not a new phenomenon. Back in the 1980s and 90s, the term “Quit and Stay” was very commonly used to describe people who were doing only the bare minimum at work.

On one end of the population curve are the group of people that will work hard and give maximum discretionary effort. It is in their genetic makeup to perform well and achieve high. At the other end are the group that have no need to achieve and are happy doing the bare minimum. The percentages in these two groups rarely change.

The bigger, changeable percentage, lie in the middle of the curve. People who, given the right work culture and environment, will fully engage and perform well, but given the wrong conditions, will easily quit and stay. The fact is, most people work in hierarchical cultures and repetitive jobs, so they are not motivated to attend work, let alone perform well.

What most people desire are jobs, and bosses, that are fun and engaging. They go to work every day for the money, but they will only perform at a high level if they feel valued and their voice is heard. If they are working in an open and transparent culture where everyone is skilled and encouraged to speak up and where the environment offers respect and psychological safety.

Unfortunately, workers today are faced with big cost of living rises, while their employers are demanding more output, with little or no increase in pay. So, people are stressed, and one way they cope is to either resign and look for a better paying job, or do the bare minimum required to earn enough survival money. This rise in general stress has coincided with a rising brigade of quiet quitters that a recent Gallup study found is “making up at least 50% of the U.S. workforce”.

The study numbers describe the size of the phenomenon but the full reasons for quiet quitting are complex. In many instances, the reason such a large proportion of the workforce has quietly quit can be traced to poor management, poor communication and workplaces where people never feel they can speak up for fear of retribution.

Unfortunately, most people lack the skills to have the tough conversations with each other. The quiet quitters struggle to have the engagement conversations with their leaders, and many bosses only know how to give directions, so can never create a working culture where speaking up is a welcomed behaviour.

A bare base cultural requirement to reduce the number of quiet quitters is to build more engaging and collaborative workplaces where people wake up each morning eager to join their colleagues in helping the organisation succeed.

Building collaborative workplaces where people want to go to work is not easy, but the five cultural dimensions of treat well, engage well, empower well, lead well and communicate well are crucial foundations on the workplace journey where everyone wants to be along for the ride.