The term “quiet quitting” came into cultural consciousness when TikToker @zkchillin posted a video in July that described the concept as “not outright quitting your job, but quitting the idea of going above and beyond. You’re still performing your duties, but you’re no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life — the reality is, it’s not.”
Fred Johnson, CEO and founder of InitiativeOne Leadership Institute in Green Bay, says quiet quitting is a new buzzword that describes something that has been occurring for decades.
“There are people who, no matter what, will always do what is absolutely required of them and no more,” he says. “Our research has shown they make up between 55 and 60% of the typical workforce.”
The quiet quitting phenomenon is closely linked with employee engagement, which, according to a recent Gallup poll, dropped for the first time in more than a decade. The poll found in 2021 that about one-third of U.S. workers (34%) reported feeling engaged at work, while 16% said they were actively disengaged.
Recent events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have accelerated the rate of declining employee engagement as a result of a priority shift, particularly for Gen Z employees.
McKenzie Clemons, a 29-year-old business development executive at McClone in Menasha, believes quiet quitting is a response to the changing nature of work and technology allowing for more of it to be done remotely.
“Especially after COVID, people realized at the end of the day my family is what’s going to be around and burning yourself out at a job is not what’s important,” she says. “Millennials and Gen Z are finding a different way to work, and it’s not sitting in a seat all day.”
“One of the things the pandemic did is it rewired people’s expectations about what they want in their lives,” Johnson adds. “It changed the role and place of work as a source of meaning.”
Bill Marklein, founder of Employ Humanity, a leadership development and culture design company based in Plymouth, says true quiet quitting differs from simply setting boundaries to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
“Quiet quitting is really disengaged employees who start to isolate themselves,” he says. “It’s a lose-lose. The individual is unhappy, and the company is losing productivity because when you have dissatisfied employees who feel stuck, they aren’t performing well.”
In a labor shortage market, low employee engagement can be especially threatening to a company. Decreased productivity, increased turnover and low-quality outputs are all real threats when quiet quitting runs rampant.
While the term itself places responsibility on the employee, Johnson says often quiet quitting is the result of an unbalanced work culture created by leadership teams.
“The more people feel included and valued in a work culture, the less quiet quitting happens,” Johnson says. “If you have someone who has lost their passion, they aren’t as engaged or excited about work and it’s a leader who hasn’t typically displayed that, that’s not a message about that person as much as it is about something that needs to be addressed within the culture of that company.”
The first step is creating an environment where honest conversations can easily occur with leaders who have high emotional intelligence, Marklein says.
“Quiet quitting does not happen often when employees can be honest, open and vulnerable with their leaders,” he says. “The number one thing is teaching leaders how to have emotional intelligence with the people they lead. If you have empathy, you are a better listener and are able to come up with better solutions for helping employees feel engaged.”
Jay Stephany, an HR generalist at Network Health in Menasha, says employees of the insurance company are offered multiple channels to connect with their supervisors, whether through regular one-on-one meetings, an annual anonymous employee engagement survey or regular in-person and virtual forums with senior leaders.
“Those one-on-one conversations are so important,” Stephany says. “You need to know what [employees] are looking for and look at what we can do to help relieve outside stressors. It’s all about having those conversations to understand what drives someone in the workplace.”
