Quiet Quitting

Today is Quiet Quitting day. 

Why is a communication wonk addressing Quiet Quitting? Isn’t it more an HR issue or a performance management issue? No, because it’s not an issue; it’s a symptom of communication breakdown. I want to put the lens of communication on this so we might have a better understanding of what’s happening and therefore be able to deal with it more effectively.

Let’s start by talking about the phrase itself. According to an article in the Atlantic, the first use of Quiet Quitting showed up in publication is about two months ago. The issue itself, however, is much older. The practice of only showing up on time, doing your job such that you can collect a paycheck, and not doing anything beyond that, in past was known as Work to Rule or Mailing It In or sometimes simply Going to Work. However, times change and language changes with the times, and now here we are faced with Quiet Quitting.

I want to begin by taking issue with the with the label itself. I think it’s dangerous. Quitting is a very final and definitive act. To apply that term without due caution can cause significant bias. Quitting is the act of someone that couldn’t care less and it does not matter to them what happens. That’s a terrible lens to put on people without carefully considering whether that is truly what is going on.

It may be that we are simply seeing behaviors that we don’t understand, rather than someone expressing dissatisfaction with their job by stepping away from it. In fact, if we read these situations correctly, we might even be able to turn this to huge advantage, so it’s important that we interpret someone’s actions with great care. Let’s look at the kinds of behaviors that might be perceived as falling under the Quiet Quitting banner.

There are basically four types of behavior that might be construed as Quiet Quitting. The first is someone who actually does not care what they contribute. They show up because they have no place better to go and they need a paycheck. These are people that could be rightly labeled as Quiet Quitting. What is their behavior telling us? They’re saying I am not invested. I’m not energized by this relationship. I’m never going to give you anything more, and I’m just not that interested in being here.

The second group comprises people who show up, provide reasonable value for the company, have a decent attitude, and go home at the end of the day feeling good about their contribution, but they don’t put in an extra effort. Their fulfillment and satisfaction come from outside of work and that’s what they reserve their energies for. These people are not saying, “I’m dissatisfied with the job.” Quite the opposite. They’re saying, “I’m really happy with this arrangement, because I can take pride in my work and go home to things that are more important to me, and I’m okay with that if my employer is okay with that.” As long as both sides are in agreement, then that’s a really good and equitable and beneficial relationship.

The third type of employee that might be perceived as Quiet Quitting is somebody who’s verging on burnout. Somebody who has been through enough, at work or personally, that their energies have been depleted over time and they simply don’t have anything more to give. Now they’re working to their own detriment and no longer providing true value to the organization or to themselves. If left unattended, these are the people that will suddenly be absent from the roster because they have nothing left to offer. This can be highly detrimental to the organization because these people typically work at a very high level, but eventually their body or their psyche is going to shut down. 

These are people that can be readily supported through discussion and engagement. If both parties identify the threat and agree to some sort of strategy to help them get back on a healthy track, not only will that elevatetheir performance, but what a great way for an employer to demonstrate that they care about their employees and are willing to invest in them

The fourth type of employees that could be perceived as participating in Quiet Quitting are the ones that are the real undiscovered gems in your organization. These are where you might find your absolute best employees, if you pay the right attention to them in the right way.

Typically, these employees are reasonably new to the job or the organization. They come in gangbusters, anxious to do a good job and put in extra effort, taking on every challenge and throwing themselves into everything with great abandon. Then, after a while, they abandoned their great abandon because they forget why they were doing it. They forget why they were putting in all the extra effort. They have either lost track of what they were trying to achieve or they have not seen that the employer has noticed that they’re putting in the extra effort. After a while, they start pulling back because it’s costing them and they’re not seeing any benefit out of it. For these people, what matters in the immediate is how much satisfaction they’re getting and where they think it will lead them. If they think that it only leads them to a paycheck, then they’re going to be prone to paring back their efforts out of self-preservation.

These employees require some nourishment from leadership in order to sustain their efforts. They need to know, “Here’s where I fit. Here’s where I might go as part of this organization,” because if they lose sight of their reason for going above and beyond, the only thing they can reasonably do is work to rule and take their pay. However, if we engage them in the right way at the right time, we will help these people to elevate their game to such a point that they will be the game changers in the organization. 

These four types of perceived Quiet Quitting behaviors are only one side of the equation, because communication is the issue and communication is always a two-way proposition. It’s always balanced, equal and bilateral, so there’s no point just looking at one side.

Think about how typical employer behaviors can be perceived by the employee as communication. Think about the onboarding process, where we define all the important details and come to an agreement that leads to a handshake before all that critical information goes to wherever it is in your organization that information goes to die. Then it sits there for a year until it’s time for the annual review when we dig it up, dust it off, sit down across from the employee and we say, “So, what’s new?’ What’s often new is they have learned so much and gone so far that they are no longer the same person that was originally hired. They’ve seen the organization warts and all, they’ve heard the whispers around the workplace, and all the nagging the little negatives have whittled away at their attitudes and perceptions. This is what we don’t invest due time and attention engaging with that person. No matter how well intended and capable an employee might be, no one can sustain a hopeful and upbeat attitude without some sort of return.

It falls to the employer to make sure that the employee understands that they are noticed, valued and supported, and to engage them so their priorities are understood and accounted for. That’s how to ensure that their original perceptions and ambitions are sustained over time.  They need to be reminded that they have a place and a future and that their efforts will lead to opportunity.

Think about what this kind of engagement says about the organization. It says, “We value you. This is not just an exchange of a paycheck in exchange for your time. If you want career and opportunity, then we’re willing to work together.” Not only does that behavior make a big difference to that one employee, but it sends a message all the way through the organization, ripple upon ripple. As a result, these dialogues are the single best investment that you can make in the development of an employee.

Two months ago, someone coined the phrase Quiet Quitting. I say that we need to coin a suitable phrase as an antidote for this toxic behavior. To that end, I propose that the cure for Quiet Quitting is Loud Listening, defined as. “Attaching more importance to what’s being said to us than what we feel the urge to say.” This act of elevating the value of the other person’s contribution to the conversation is how we turn communication into a bottom-line contributor.

Loud Listening. It’s a thing. If you make it one.