Quiet quitting is something that many people have heard about. So, what does it mean? Put simply, ‘quiet quitting’ is doing the bare minimum at work according to your job description. If your working hours are 9-5 with 1 hour for lunch, it means not working a minute more. It also means not taking on extra responsibilities, projects or events that would increase those hours. Additionally, it means not ‘stepping up’ during busy periods or due to co-worker absence. Read on to find out more.
Quiet quitting
Unfortunately for organisations, quiet quitting is not the stuff of science fiction. A trend from TikTok, initially dubbed ‘the slow work movement’, has more recently developed into quiet quitting. Furthermore, this is not just limited to Gen-Z who tend to dominate TikTok. No, this is something that has spread beyond onto other social platforms or with friends and relatives. Working the minimum, paring back hours and additional responsibilities, many employees are pushing back. Yes, that’s right, people are trying to get the job they want rather than the job they have. So, what is causing this resistance to working culture?
The causes of quiet quitting
One could argue that the backlash started some time ago, when millennials began entering the workforce towards the end of the 20th century. Not quite the digital natives of Gen Z, millennials entered a workplace that was starting to realise the benefits of computing, automation and outsourcing. Higher productivity, more accessible employees, standardisation and robotisation of administrative tasks and outsourcing to low-cost economies. Sadly, many of these employees faced high demands and saw the leading edge of today’s ‘always on’ work culture. Gen Z later followed and had higher expectations of work, including flexible hours, work-from-anywhere, individualism, social value, sustainability and advanced digital tools.
Fast-forward to 2020 and something dramatic happened. Many companies pushed staff into homeworking or furlough because of coronavirus. This resulted in some employees having a miserable time locked in one-bedroom flats and others doing the work of four people because their colleagues were furloughed. Frontline workers were exposed to physical risk from an unknown virus and asked to take pay cuts or to take on extra responsibilities due to furlough and absence. Truth be told, the majority of these people received little in the way of thanks, compensation or mental health support. Aside from their payslips, a lot of people reassessed how they see work and poor management, prioritisation of profits and pitiful wellbeing support is driving the quiet quitters.
The impact of quiet quitters
It may sound dramatic but this is a major problem for many companies. If we take a simple example of a small company with 250 staff and a broad demographic. The typical contract of employment is 35 hours per week, 5 weeks holiday plus 8 bank holidays and on average staff take 2 days off sick. Your actual average working hours are around 50 per week. Now, fast-forward to today and imagine that 1 in 5 of your staff has decided to ‘quiet quit’ and on average take 12 days off sick from now on. That equates to 15 hours per week less output across 43 weeks (645 hours) and 50 hours per week for 2 weeks sick leave (100 hours) for each of the 50 staff. Yes, that’s over 37,000 hours less work in a year which would require you to hire 24 extra staff to cover the shortfall at their contracted hours.
Aside from the financial and productivity impacts, the workplace would look very different if 1 in 5 are coasting. Of course, a few were coasting before the quiet quitting trend took off. In an open-plan office, this is very noticeable and likely to either irk colleagues who are pressured to pick up the slack or cause others to follow suit. Perhaps your overall employee experience was the cause but quiet quitting may also aggravate the experience of colleagues. Unfortunately, the move to hybrid and remote working may be the enabler of the quiet quitting movement. Without peer pressure, monitoring and team building activities, the drop-off is harder to see, pinpoint and measure. So, why not tap a range of perspectives and measures to guide you in your employee change project?
The external impact of quiet quitting
There is of course an external impact to those who quietly decide to quit, go slow and work within their capability. Those in customer-facing roles, customer services, engineers, delivery drivers and others may not ‘go the extra mile’ for customers. Additionally, as recruitment portals like Glassdoor and LinkedIn gain more market share with job seekers, poor EX may be publicised. Whether it is sub-optimal CX or recent poor performance on EX, these may cause organisations to lose customers and/or employees. Over time, customers may perceive brands or organisations as ‘uncaring’ if staff seem to do the minimum. Additionally, if colleagues vote with their feet, an organisation develops a negative reputation and people don’t want to join.
To summarise, it goes without saying that fewer hours and responsibilities may mean insufficient staff to service customer needs. It may also mean a less appealing place to work if colleagues refuse to ‘pull their weight’ or customer complaints lead to escalation.
Productivity needs a great experience
Okay, so this isn’t the first time we have droned on about employee experience and it won’t be the last. Great EX means happy, fulfilled and motivated people which in turn forms the foundation of productivity. The alternative is rather draconian and ‘forced’ measures are likely to lead to absence, slow work and resignations as we have seen. Longer term, you risk brand damage from both employee and customer feedback. So, that’s why we work with businesses on strategic planning and organisational design to ensure a healthy and effective organisation. We also offer neuroscientific techniques to measure and recommend improvements to your employee and customer experiences. These include managed services to measure the sentiment of starters and leavers or quarterly neuroscience surveys.
If you would like support with productivity and quiet quitting, drop us a line at sales@think-beyond.co.uk. Alternatively, we will call you if you leave us a few personal details online.
Finally, why not check out other articles to get your ideas flowing.