A guide to combating quiet quitting

Each morn­ing at the start of the work­ing day, we face a set of ques­tions. What tasks should I focus on today? How should I man­age my time? Do I go above and beyond my manager’s expec­ta­tions and put extra effort into my work? 

Many, it seems, are answer­ing ‘no’ to the last ques­tion, and the employ­ees with this mind­set are engag­ing in qui­et quit­ting. 

First coined on Tik­Tok, the cen­tral premise of the qui­et quit­ting trend is that work should not be the focus of our lives. Self-iden­ti­fied qui­et quit­ters resist the expec­ta­tion from their employ­ers and fel­low employ­ees to put extra time and ener­gy behind their work for the ben­e­fit of the busi­ness or in the hope of secur­ing a pro­mo­tion in the future.

While it’s impos­si­ble to say how many work­ers have quit qui­et­ly this year, it is notable that the trend is gain­ing trac­tion, as pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the UK and the US is dip­ping. 

In August, the US Labour Depart­ment announced that work pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the year’s sec­ond quar­ter fell at its steep­est pace since records began – and a recent Gallup study esti­mat­ed that at least half of the US work­force have qui­et­ly quit to some degree. 

Dr Ash­ley Wein­berg is an occu­pa­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sal­ford. He believes the impact of the pan­dem­ic on the rela­tion­ship between employ­ees and employ­ers part­ly explains the rise of the qui­et quit­ting trend. 

He says: “Organ­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture is the mor­tar between the bricks of how busi­ness­es work and psy­cho­log­i­cal con­tracts are an impor­tant part of it. This is the unwrit­ten set of expec­ta­tions between employ­ees and employ­ers – and it’s how peo­ple under­stand the ben­e­fits of their job, be it mon­e­tary or social. 

“But dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, many people’s psy­cho­log­i­cal con­tracts with work were either com­plete­ly shat­tered – because their employ­er had to close and their job was sud­den­ly gone – or the medi­um through which they under­stood their work­ing lives changed com­plete­ly. A lot of the social side of work dis­ap­peared and was replaced with online meet­ings where the focus was often sole­ly on work or the task at hand. That’s a poor sub­sti­tute for what employ­ees used to have pre-pan­dem­ic.”

Wein­berg adds that employ­ee dis­en­gage­ment is one con­se­quence of rip­ping up our psy­cho­log­i­cal con­tract with work – and recent stud­ies sup­port this view. Gallup’s glob­al work­place report for 2022 revealed that only 9% of work­ers in the UK were engaged or enthu­si­as­tic about their place of work, com­ing 33rd out of 38 Euro­pean coun­tries. 

Oth­er fac­tors, though, are at play that may be con­tribut­ing to employ­ee dis­en­gage­ment and feed­ing into the qui­et quit­ting trend. Notably, wide­spread dis­en­gage­ment is com­ing at a time of extreme once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion finan­cial pres­sures, where salaries are track­ing way below infla­tion, and many work­ers are locked out of the hous­ing mar­ket due to pro­hib­i­tive­ly high prices regard­less of how many addi­tion­al hours they do. 

Accord­ing to the TUC, British work­ers put in two and a half weeks more work per year than the aver­age Euro­pean. How­ev­er, this addi­tion­al work is not trans­lat­ing into high­er incomes or a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life, with many mil­len­ni­als and gen-Zers set to be worse off finan­cial­ly than their par­ents. 

In this con­text, qui­et quit­ting – and the con­scious dis­en­gage­ment from addi­tion­al work beyond what is required – appears to be more of a cor­rec­tion to a work­ing cul­ture that hasn’t recog­nised or remu­ner­at­ed staff than an out­right rejec­tion of the work itself. 

Maria Kor­dow­icz, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in organ­i­sa­tion­al behav­iour at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham and direc­tor of its cen­tre for inter­pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion and learn­ing, con­curs with this view. 

She says: “The decrease in work/life delin­eation dur­ing lock­down many expe­ri­enced put work­ers in a posi­tion where they had to advo­cate more vocif­er­ous­ly for their needs in how they could best ful­fil their role in a chal­leng­ing con­text. 

“Qui­et quit­ting is about mak­ing an effort to uphold our well­be­ing through the way we work and through redis­cov­er­ing the rela­tion­ship we have with work, rather than risk burnout by work­ing exces­sive hours or by hav­ing only a work-based iden­ti­ty.”

In the imme­di­ate after­math of the pan­dem­ic, the desire to seek out more ful­fill­ing work man­i­fest­ed in the great res­ig­na­tion trend, with 47 mil­lion Amer­i­cans vol­un­tar­i­ly leav­ing their jobs in 2021 alone. But, giv­en the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis and ris­ing ener­gy bills, many work­ers may opt to tem­porar­i­ly remain secure with their cur­rent employ­ers until the incom­ing finan­cial storm is over. 

The ben­e­fit of this from the employer’s per­spec­tive is that there is still an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reen­gage work­ers before they leave. But to do this, Kor­dow­icz notes, employ­ers need to recog­nise how their actions have con­tributed to the qui­et quit­ting trend. 

“We have to move away from indi­vid­u­al­is­ing the prob­lem — i.e. blam­ing the indi­vid­ual work­er for dis­en­gag­ing — and instead seek organ­i­sa­tion­al solu­tions, such as appro­pri­ate work­load and non-tokenis­tic imple­men­ta­tions of employ­ee-cen­tred well­be­ing poli­cies.” 

How­ev­er, wide­spread remote work­ing lim­its an employer’s abil­i­ty to engage work­ers who have qui­et­ly quit. Where­as before the pan­dem­ic, office cul­ture enabled employ­ers to quick­ly build a rap­port with their teams, many employ­ees now work in iso­la­tion and only inter­act with their col­leagues dur­ing the odd video call sched­uled through­out their days. 

Jill Cot­ton, career trends expert at Glass­door, believes that employ­ers need to put in extra effort to build a com­pa­ny cul­ture that res­onates with employ­ees regard­less of where they are work­ing. 

“Busi­ness­es need to cre­ate an equi­table expe­ri­ence for all employ­ees. Mean­ing that whether they work remote­ly or in the office full time, employ­ees still feel an active part of the work­place com­mu­ni­ty. 

“In lieu of ‘water­cool­er moments’, employ­ers need to make time for remote employ­ees to be heard and feel that their con­tri­bu­tions are val­ued. Set up reg­u­lar infor­mal group meet­ings to help fos­ter per­son­al con­nec­tions beyond day-to-day work chat and encour­age recog­ni­tion to hap­pen organ­i­cal­ly.” 

Cotton’s point touch­es on the vital role line man­agers play in reen­gag­ing work­ers who have qui­et­ly quit. While well­be­ing poli­cies and high­er wages will help employ­ees feel more appre­ci­at­ed, a recent Har­vard Busi­ness Review study found that the deci­sion of whether an employ­ee qui­et­ly quits often rests on the qual­i­ty of their rela­tion­ship with their man­ag­er.

If an employ­ee felt under­val­ued or unap­pre­ci­at­ed, they were more like­ly to dis­en­gage from work. Con­verse­ly, the research found if an employ­ee felt like their man­ag­er trust­ed them and cared about their well­be­ing, they were less like­ly to qui­et­ly quit. 

“The rela­tion­ship you have with your man­ag­er is the most preva­lent in your day-to-day. Line man­agers must be trained and thor­ough­ly under­stand how to man­age hybrid work­ing employ­ees,” says Nic­ki Pritchard, man­ag­ing part­ner at Ander­son Quigley. 

She adds: “Many peo­ple become man­agers because they’ve sim­ply pro­gressed to a cer­tain lev­el of their career – but that’s not to say they’ve been sup­port­ed or trained to be a man­ag­er. Oth­ers might have years of face-to-face man­age­ment expe­ri­ence, but they now need to under­stand how to man­age remote­ly. Those skills con­tribute a lot to the company’s wider cul­ture, which is now more impor­tant than ever.”