What is “quiet-quitting,” and what to do about it?
“Quiet quitting” is an employee’s voluntary decision to intentionally withhold some aspect of their typical job performance in response to a perception that their employer is taking advantage of them. Quiet quitting is an employee power move to regain or retain their self-respect when they feel a psychological threat in the workplace from those who make the rules. Quiet-quitting employees know they have other options (they could quit or they could keep performing), but they choose to stay and withhold. [It’s different from burnout – a psychological reaction to unmanaged or unmanageable workplace stress – an involuntary response. Quiet-quitting is voluntary and intentional.]
Quiet quitting is not new. While the label might be new, organizational behavior scholars have long studied behavior that they call “counterproductive work behaviors” (CWB). Quiet-quitting, a behavior in which employees remain in a job but demonstrate minimal effort, falls into the CWB category because it works against the organization’s goals.
Although the quiet-quitting label is attached to the behaviors of individual employees, leaders should make sure these behaviors are not symptomatic of a larger problem; a breakdown in the relationship between managers and employees. In reality, many managers do not possess the interpersonal skills to be effective managers. This means that many employees are forced to tolerate weak leadership because they do not have a way to fix that problem.
Nowadays, when younger employees and those at the bottom of the power pyramid have perceptions of the work environment, they are more likely to express their dissatisfaction loudly, openly, and broadly than employees have in the past. They are breaking some well-established “norms” about keeping quiet and voicing dissatisfaction only through the “line of command.” Instead, they share evocative workplace experiences and make the issues transparent and unavoidable. One might say this is a movement. Given that it is a job-seekers market and that Gen Z will be the future leaders, this issue will remain at the forefront and will drive change.
Quiet-quitting is a phenomenon that all leaders should understand, especially if it shows up in their organizations. While it is important to think about solutions at the individual level, it is even more important to understand if quiet-quitting is a symptom of systemic cracks in daily employee experience.
