The three types of quiet quitters and what leaders can learn from them

Social media loves a buzz­word and the flavour of the past month has been a new trend sup­pos­ed­ly sweep­ing offices across the world. ’Qui­et quit­ting’ is essen­tial­ly a mod­ern ver­sion of work­ing to rule, fil­tered through a post-pan­dem­ic empha­sis on self care and work-life bal­ance.

Thou­sands of stretched-thin employ­ees have declared they will no longer go above and beyond to impress their boss­es. Instead, qui­et quit­ters vow to com­plete the tasks in their job descrip­tions with­in their con­tract­ed hours – and say they will not work beyond them. 

Isn’t that just… nor­mal? Prob­a­bly, accord­ing to a recent Gallup sur­vey. It found that around 50% of US work­ers are “dis­en­gaged”, doing just the min­i­mum required while stay­ing detached from their job. Just 32% are engaged, with the remain­ing 18% active­ly dis­sat­is­fied at work.

Maria Camp­bell, chief oper­at­ing office at fin­tech Grif­fin and for­mer head of peo­ple at Mon­zo, agrees that a lot of work­ers have always “showed up, done exact­ly what is asked of them and then left”.

What’s new, she thinks, is that this is the first time this has impact­ed big tech com­pa­nies and oth­er organ­i­sa­tions peo­ple might con­sid­er to be more excit­ing or inter­est­ing places to work.

For Cara Bren­nan Alla­mano, chief peo­ple offi­cer at per­for­mance man­age­ment plat­form Lat­tice, qui­et quit­ting rep­re­sents employ­ees re-exam­in­ing a ‘new nor­mal’ where, for many, the bal­ance of pow­er is tipped in their favour. Some lead­ers might see it as a threat to busi­ness. But she believes it can be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for organ­i­sa­tions to reflect and reset.

“We have a lot to learn from [qui­et quit­ters]. It can tell us what’s work­ing in our organ­i­sa­tion – and what might not be. I have seen real­ly amaz­ing organ­i­sa­tions built dur­ing down­turns because they lis­tened to their employ­ees,” she says.

What might that look like? Racon­teur spoke to three self-described qui­et quit­ters to find out how they became one and how busi­ness lead­ers can address the issues they raise.

Quiet quitter 1: the boundary-setter

Alice, 32, decid­ed she was done with going above and beyond in her sales role last year. Under­staffing and an incom­pe­tent man­ag­er turned the job into a “grind” dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, she recalls, leav­ing her feel­ing oblig­ed to work late hours and skip lunch.

Now, she works at “10%” of her for­mer pace. “I just stopped doing any­thing I don’t need to do to hit my tar­gets,” she says. “I don’t want to be stressed. I want to fin­ish work at five o’clock.”

Alice’s man­ag­er recent­ly asked her to start train­ing new staff. “I’m absolute­ly not doing it unless she gives me about £10,000 to £15,000 more. I am plan­ning to have my job descrip­tion in my hand [and tell her] I shouldn’t be deal­ing with this at all.”

Many of her co-work­ers are also qui­et­ly quit­ting, Alice believes. “The whole team is burned out after Covid. They are all putting their hands up say­ing they’re not going to do any­thing they don’t need to.”

Camp­bell says work­ing late hours and skip­ping lunch should nev­er be expect­ed, “cer­tain­ly with­out any kind of trade-off”. If Alice is hit­ting her pre-arranged tar­gets, what she is doing is the cor­rect approach.

“This idea that peo­ple should be going above and beyond comes from hus­tle cul­ture, and there’s a push­back on that now. I’ve seen a lot of friends, par­tic­u­lar­ly women, just stop try­ing so hard dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Peo­ple have realised there is no oblig­a­tion to do all this extra stuff.”

Instead, man­age­ment needs to re-eval­u­ate the team and its incen­tive struc­tures to find a way to get addi­tion­al work done with­out push­ing staff over the edge.

“It’s about give and take, but the give doesn’t have to be mon­ey,” she says. Solu­tions could include hir­ing a new employ­ee or find­ing anoth­er per­son on the team who wants to gain expe­ri­ence in train­ing oth­ers. 

Quiet quitter 2: the disengaged dawdler

Ben, a 26-year-old tech worker, says he qui­et­ly quit while strug­gling to keep up moti­va­tion over a large mul­ti-year project. While he still meets most dead­lines, he knows he is not work­ing at his full capac­i­ty. He often spends a large chunk of his work­day watch­ing YouTube videos in bed.

Although he is well-paid, his employer’s flat struc­ture means there are just a hand­ful of oppor­tu­ni­ties to move up. Instead, man­age­ment expects staff to be dri­ven by the company’s “world-chang­ing” mis­sion. 

“They pour the Kool-Aid a lot,” Ben says. “When I first joined, I’d drink it, like most peo­ple do, but I became quite dis­en­fran­chised. I just don’t care any­more.”

With lit­tle day-to-day man­age­ment over­sight, he believes that no one real­ly notices what he is doing. In the soft­ware indus­try it can be hard to esti­mate how long any task should take, Ben explains. “You can basi­cal­ly expand or shrink any piece of work to real­ly large degrees before peo­ple raise an eye­brow.”

Ben’s man­ag­er should try to under­stand what moti­vates him as an indi­vid­ual, Camp­bell says. Pro­gres­sion will look dif­fer­ent to each employ­ee, whether gain­ing impact, sta­tus or new prob­lems to solve.

“Mis­sion-dri­ven tech com­pa­nies often don’t prop­er­ly dig into what moti­vates work­ers. There’s this assump­tion that every­one is as bought-in as the founders and everyone’s work­ing their hard­est. And while trust is impor­tant, you can’t blind­ly trust peo­ple if you don’t under­stand what they are look­ing to get out of their job and giv­ing them that,” she says.

For Bren­nan Alla­mano, Ben’s sto­ry shows the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with employ­ees about what their next step could look like. “If they work hard­er, what skills and oppor­tu­ni­ties will they gain?

“Mis­sion dri­ve is pos­si­ble but it takes a lot more effort to con­tin­ue that con­ver­sa­tion. Man­agers should be able to set goals with employ­ees no mat­ter how long they’ve been there for.”

Quiet quitter 3: the super-slacker

Chloe, 29, says she can only cope with her repet­i­tive remote job in tech by log­ging into an online chat room for hours each day. She’s even gone on day trips to vis­it friends in oth­er cities when she should be work­ing.

“It’s how I’ve always approached my job. I decid­ed I very much want­ed to focus on my social life while being at work and it’s the only way I’ve made it bear­able. Some­times I have to attend meet­ings but I’m also [par­tic­i­pat­ing] in the chat at the same time.”

She’s suc­cess­ful­ly held down the posi­tion for four years and says she almost always com­pletes her assigned work on time. The small com­pa­ny she works for does not have per­for­mance reviews, but Chloe believes her boss would be sur­prised and angry if he found out.

For a time, she did try to engage with the job ful­ly, but “I didn’t have any moti­va­tion – I felt so bored.” Were she forced to spend the entire work­day actu­al­ly work­ing, she’d sim­ply quit, she says.

Camp­bell says: “It sounds like an incred­i­bly dull job, where she’s not get­ting any kind of moti­va­tion  from her employ­er or intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion. That’s a prob­lem from the com­pa­ny’s per­spec­tive, but it also sug­gests to me that she should quit and find some­thing else that will engage her.”

Bren­nan Alla­mano adds that although Chloe has made a per­son­al choice to check out, she won­ders what oppor­tu­ni­ties she might be miss­ing out on.

“If she’s able to main­tain her cur­rent role with very lit­tle effort, what could she do if she did engage with an organ­i­sa­tion with the right struc­tures in place? She might find that she has a lot more ahead of her from a career per­spec­tive than she might think.”