What Is Quiet Quitting and How to Address This Trend?

After two years of constant uncertainty and changes that affected employees worldwide, they are exhausted and overwhelmed. The fact is that remote work brought increased work flexibility and autonomy, allowing employees to choose when, where, and how they want to work. On the other hand, many remote workers may feel the urge to work overtime fearing that their performance will go unseen. This attitude towards work can easily blur the line between professional and private life, disrupting work/life balance and leading to burnout.

Quiet quitting started as a trend on social media as an attempt to counterbalance the hustle culture and the urge to be available for work 24/7 only to become a burning topic in the business world.

How Should Managers Should Look at This Phenomenon?

Quiet quitting is employees’ tendency to complete tasks strictly within their job description, trying to preserve a fragile work/life balance. While this is a justifiable coping mechanism, it can cause numerous issues affecting employee engagement. 

Because Gallup sees quiet quitters as employees who are “not engaged and are psychologically detached from their work, estimating that they make up around 50% of the U.S. workforce. This significant decline in employee engagement rate is related to unclear goals and expectations, and the lack of professional development opportunities indicating the growing gap between employees and managers. 

As a manager, you’re responsible for keeping your employees satisfied and engaged so that they can contribute to the overall business’s success.

If you are facing a growing number of unmotivated quiet quitters among your team members, you must W act immediately.

First, identify the causes of dissatisfaction, and go above and beyond to fix specific issues and meet your employees’ needs so that they can be highly engaged and productive again.

What Drives Quiet Quitting Trend?

According to research employee engagement and satisfaction have significantly dropped among Gen Z and Millennials. These are employees younger than 35.

You should take a closer look at the following statistics to gain a better understanding of decreased employee engagement and satisfaction in the post-Covid era.

• The percentage of engaged employees under 35 dropped by 6% between 2019 and 2022, while the number of actively disengaged employees in this demography increased by 6%.
• More and more younger employees believe that their managers care for and encourage their professional growth. The same goes for hybrid and remote workers. 
• Finally, only 40% of young workers state that they know what the manager’s expectations are.

These worrying findings may be a much-needed wake-up call for managers responsible for employee engagement, satisfaction, and well-being.

Luckily the changed approach toward productivity, and the help of advanced tools, like monitoring software for employees, can make your employees more engaged in their work. Here are several things you can do.

Talk with Employees Openly and Honestly

When was the last time you took a genuine interest in your employee’s life circumstances, plans, and expectations? This may be the right time to encourage them to share their suggestions, ideas, and ideas openly. You should take time and organize 1on 1 meetings with your employees just to check on them, hear them out and address any potential issues that may come their way.

By cultivating open communication where employees won’t be reprimanded or judged for expressing their opinions, you’ll create an atmosphere built on trust. More importantly, your employees will feel appreciated and respected and may be ready to give more than a bare minimum at work.

Set Reasonable Tasks, Workloads, and Deadlines

One of the major issues that may be overwhelming for your employees, making them less engaged and motivated, is unclear goals paired with unrealistic expectations and deadlines. 

When you assign complex tasks to employees without providing clear guidelines or expectations, you make it harder for employees to start working, not knowing where to start or what the wanted outcomes are. This can affect employee morale and self-esteem and lead to complete detachment from work in the long run.

Your highly engaged employees may suddenly minimize their outcomes, not engaging in collaboration outside their job requirements, without any obvious reason. If this happens, you can analyze their employee monitoring data to identify problems. Detailed information on their activities and time spent on various tasks and projects may indicate that they have too much on their plate and need your help and support to follow through. 

Start with dividing complex tasks into several smaller ones and distributing them to the team members with more free time on their hands Then by tracking the time needed to complete specific tasks and projects, try to make more accurate and reasonable deadlines. 

This can motivate your employees to get back on track and be as productive as possible.

Prioritize Employee Well Being

Although the troubling time is behind us, the Covid pandemic and changed life circumstances have affected employee well-being permanently. Faced with unprecedented uncertainty, most employees needed to battle depression, increased anxiety, and stress. 

For all these reasons, HR professionals should make employee well-being their first priority to keep them engaged and satisfied in their roles. This may be a demanding goal, but if you create a supportive environment and effective employee well-being programs, you can achieve it.

This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.