“Quiet Quiting” on a Collision Course with “Quiet Hiring;” How to Make Matters Worse.

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations, Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

“Quiet Quitting” and “Quiet Hiring” may be new names, but both phenomena have been around as long as there has been work to perform and someone hired to perform it. The media seems to believe they discovered the trends and named them, like explorers “discovered” new lands…that were inhabited. Like every other impending crisis named, there seems to be manufactured pressure to respond to it – spawning a wave of “expert” opinions that often overshoot the intended target and sometimes complicating matters further.

In an article, What to Do About Quiet Quitting: 3 Ways to Reframe the Narrative, the author comments, “You’ve seen the term splashed across headlines and igniting social media. It isn’t a new phenomenon, but it’s coming into sharper focus – like a bullseye – as employees return to the office. Quiet quitting, or “quitting in place” or, simply, “disengagement,” is the latest viral catchphrase that reminds us of one single, inexorable truth: That the pandemic has left workplaces reimagined and workers forever changed. And it’s a wakeup call for employers.”

Disengagement is defined as “the action or process of withdrawing from involvement in a particular activity, situation, or group,” which can be hidden or overt. It can be a simple difference between a worker minimally doing their job to take home their pay and no more, to someone doing that and harboring growing resentment towards their manager, the company and/or their coworkers but lacking the skills and confidence to move on. If left unchecked, it can poison the work environment and, worse, may lead to workplace confrontations.

While many employers lack the strategy, will or awareness to reengage demoralized workers, often employers exacerbate the situation by doubling down on the neglect or provoking an escalation. Years of not balancing the inputs of competitive performance by foregoing the development of tools and expertise to facilitate enhanced, sustained performance – coupled with simmering worker detachment – sometimes leads employers to accept advice that is more momentarily convenient rather than appropriate when results seem less than expected. Pushing unrealistic performance goals on a fragile organization only fans the simmer to a boil.

Take, for example, the concept of “quiet hiring.” This is not a new concept, either. Pressures to increase quarterly earnings has cause many an employer to pile additional tasks on remaining employees with no increase in compensation. Sometimes they push long work hours with no time off and tolerate unreasonably demanding managers. With increasing outside demands and pressures that chip away at an employee’s sense of purpose and passion, an employee may feel trapped in the bowels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. For organizations with widespread disaffection, this can lead to increasing turnover, which leads to increasing work loads for remaining workers, broadening dissatisfaction and the cycle can spiral out of control. In the beginning, the best workers can leave when “fed up” because they can and have options. Without a plan to develop the remaining workers to fill the void is like pouring gasoline on a fire to put it out.

Chris O’Sullivan wrote in an article entitled Why CFOs Should Be Cautious About ‘Quiet Hiring, “When looking at the causes of this new workplace trend, the unmistakable truth is businesses need to dial up their investments in talent. Over the past few years, the workplace has been defined by buzzwords. From the “great resignation” to “quiet quitting” and beyond, these terms have shaped the narrative around the employer-employee dynamic in an attempt to better understand the disconnect within organizations. The latest term to grab headlines is “quiet hiring,” which has the potential to put tremendous consequences in front of executives if not addressed.”

The author explains further, “While there are nuances to how people define it [quiet hiring], the general consensus remains the same: to help fill immediate, acute business needs, employees are given more day-to-day responsibilities without the benefits that would come with a traditional promotion, such as recognition for their work, salary increases, and more. Essentially, it’s a way for executives to get the skills and resources they need to increase capacity and meet company goals without adding any new overhead costs.” That seems the goal anyway.

Let’s face it, there are not any GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) metrics for nearly all of what an employer does to develop and maintain the workforce needed. Employees are considered a cost. Profits are determined by how much money remains after costs are considered. Want more profits, cut your costs…which usually means layoffs or foregoing hiring at the expense of the remaining employees. For as sophisticated as we would like to think management techniques have become, this is an area that never changed.

If the solution to employees being dissatisfied with levels of pay for the level of required work, maybe raising wages, giving up a little profit, is the answer. If an employer needs each worker to be able to perform more of the operation’s required tasks, maybe allowing for training and providing a wage increase is right. It is all about finding the right balance to remaining profitable enough and have the level of workforce to sustain that goal. The cost of unbalanced approaches to “quiet quitting” and “quiet hiring” to the company can be far more the longer the imbalance grows and the need for drastic, inappropriate, actions are required.

Don’t get hung up on the hyped phenomena the media needed for a story, focus on what your gut tells you. Draw on your own experience of when you were in the worker’s shoes. Seek out decisions that you and your employees can live with…even if it means educating your board of directors on the difference between “short-term gain” and “long-term disruption or destruction.”

Proactive Technologies’ structured on-the-job training system approach builds a worker training infrastructure to accelerate the transfer of expertise – increasing worker capacity, work quantity, work quality and compliance…while lower the employer’s internal costs of training.  See how it might help your firm, your family of facilities or your region, tap into undeveloped worker capacity and increase the return on worker investment. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative  today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can be followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. A 13-minute promo briefing is available at the Proactive Technologies website and provides an overview to get you started and to help you explain it to your staff. As always, onsite presentations are available, as well.