The rise of the term quiet quitting in 2022 was a benchmark shift in employer and employee dynamics that saw the workforce pushing back against long-used management practices designed to maximize the return on investment of human resources.
Executives decried the phenomenon as the result of an entitled mindset in the newly minted members of the workforce. HR specialists came up with various reasons for the dynamic including such raging blather as quiet quitting as a non-confrontational tactic to exit a company.
The problem is that quiet quitting is routinely neither quiet or quitting. A manager approaches an employee and says, “I’m going to need you to…” and fill in the blank with whatever “above and beyond” request that the employer has deemed essential to success. The employee, out loud, not quietly, says, “No, I’m not going to do that. You don’t pay me to do that.” What the employer is left with is an employee, who has not quit the job, vocalizing a particular issue.
This is the issue. Employers have been lazy for years. Particularly in the drafting of the key documents they use to run their business. Are you an employer? Don’t get your feelings hurt. That after all would make you no better than your employees that you perceive as sniveling, ungrateful, and immature.
The quiet quitting employee is specifically saying this, “You’ve used a vague and ambiguous job description to attract me to this position and on the basis of that ambiguous job description I’ve bartered with you for the best pay possible which by the way still isn’t even what I wanted it to be. That being the case, I’m not going to let you take advantage of your lazy drafting and exert moral pressure on me to do something extra for a job I’m already not compensated enough for when you have not legal standing to require me to do it as long as I realize I have power in this situation too.”
We’ve been in business long enough that we can craft clear, measurable job description done to the attitudes we want reflected in our company and the daily routine we want our team to follow. But we don’t for 2 reasons: we don’t want to put the work in and we deep down really like using ambiguity to milk employees for as much as we can get.
Here’s the problem. The source of quiet quitting. Where did it all start? Social media. How? Social media has been quickly evolving as a “thank you economy” where the fastest way to build an audience and develop leads was to provide valuable content for free. As a result…experts in all fields were flooding social media with knowledge in their industry. Life hacks. Online courses. Professional development. And…
Insider information on the do’s, don’ts, and dirty secrets of Human Resources.
Human resources experts and employment law attorneys started sharing content about illegal or questionable HR practices and the world heard. They learned that they had footing to fight what has felt patently unfair for years and years. So they planted their foot and pushed back.
What now?
Now is the time for employers to ride the wave. Accept that you are dealing with a workforce that is pushing you to develop as a leader, manager, and administrator. Here are the 5 areas to develop:
1. Recraft your company vision in a collaborative manner and make sure to include purpose and culture.
You can’t reach a new destination with an outdated map. Hold the company meeting. Announce that it is time to brush up the company vision. Make it clear that any vision that each person doesn’t get to contribute to isn’t one you want, because you want them all to have a sense of ownership over it. Tell them that having a positive impact on the world while deriving ridiculous profits is important. Tell them that the experience of what it is like to come to work every day is important to you. Of course, tell them that anything within reason will be considered. Also use it as an opportunity to “reinterview” each one your team members to develop personalized profiles that include what their core individual motivations are. Creating the space for your employees to define their own sense of personal and professional purpose creates significant buy in for the day-to-day work and productivity goals.
2. Realign you management software.
If the daily income-producing activity of your company isn’t visualized on a dashboard that can be customized to each person’s role and responsibilities, then you are dropping the ball. Being able to tell what they have accomplished is the first step in creating a self-managed and self-progressing team. It lays the foundation for the improvement of job descriptions, policies, and performance standards.
3. Redraft your documents.
The way that employment documents have been drafted for so long relied on a population of people driven by different ideals, mindsets, and motivations. They were also designed at a time when the mindsets of employers were different. They are in need of modernization, particularly as to the clarity and specificity with which they are drafted. Job descriptions can be very precise without losing generality. General duties can be paired with specific metrics. Take this mindset to the table and revisit each document used in the recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding process.
Quiet quitting doesn’t have to be a incurable plague. The cure just has to come from the right direction.