In the age of quiet quitting, here’s how to build a positive workplace culture

Whether it’s quiet quitting, quiet hiring, or resenteeism the workplace is now under excruciating examination. 

It’s a particularly difficult time for SMB owners and managers. Stubbornly high inflation, talent shortages and rising interest rates just add more pressure to the SMBs struggling to make ends meet. What isn’t helping the situation is the perfect storm of a high-pressure business environment colliding with the always-on, unrelenting world of social media. 

How employees are managing stressors

The result is workplace trends and memes; quiet quitting — where employees disengage and do the bare minimum; quiet hiring — where employers increase the responsibility of an employee without a commensurate rise in compensation; and resenteeism — remaining in a job whilst being fundamentally unhappy. The list expands daily. Some of them are light-hearted, others deadly serious.

It’s worth noting that the majority of the behaviours being made into memes are not new. Employees that coasted by — simply meeting their KPIs — have always existed. And employers have always been under immense pressure to increase productivity while slashing budgets. 

A meme is, ultimately, a unit of cultural transmission. When a workplace trend gets global attention, it is a mistake not to take them seriously. Workers today have more bargaining power, and far more options with remote work in the post-pandemic era. What the memes communicate is that the workplace isn’t keeping up with the expectations of what modern employees now expect from their careers. 

Workplace culture and employer responsibility

While some employers might be annoyed by workplace memes and double down on bad behaviour, the memes and trends should ultimately be cause for reflection: How many of your employees are quiet quitters? Could you be accused of quiet hiring? 

Better yet: why is this happening in the first place, and how can I stop it?

A negative work culture, despite the best efforts of employers and hiring managers, will occur when expectations don’t match. I recently spoke to Ben Ikin, an Australian sporting legend, about the similarities of workplace culture with that of elite sports. He explained that with the extreme pressure of the NRL premiership each year, creating a positive team culture where everyone is engaged is crucial for success. 

There’s no room for quiet quitting in this type of high-pressure environment. All team members must be driven and focused on achieving the same goal. And it’s very apparent when the wrong person has been selected for the team — because they don’t perform well. This doesn’t mean they’re a bad player. It just means that they’re not in the right place, with the right people, and as such, won’t reach their full potential. 

Just like the NRL, SMBs can quickly go from harmonious to toxic work cultures without carefully hiring with culture in mind. This is particularly true in a tough business environment like today’s, which is demanding more from workers.

In my experience, the only way to truly avoid bad hires is to first identify ‘who’ your company is, the qualities that it has, and the kinds of people it attracts. You cannot rely on ‘gut feel’ alone to get this right. Research shows that humans are highly biased and we rely on our emotions much more than objective information when making decisions.

Culture assessments provide a more objective, data-driven approach that can be used to get an insight into your company’s “personality” and its main characteristics. Sometimes, that means there will be a mismatch between where the company’s management wants it to be, and where the data says it is. Bridging that gap between your company’s current and desired personality characteristics can be a delicate process. It starts with hiring the right people that fit the desired company personality, but also by making changes to the work environment so that they will thrive.

By taking an objective approach to assess how your company culture operates, you can begin hiring the right staff. With the expectations of staff and management aligned, staff won’t be posting about quiet quitting online. One thing you cannot do is stop the memes and trends entirely. They’re here to stay. 

Rudy Crous is a corporate psychologist and the co-founder and CEO of people intelligence company, Compono.