A wake up call: Lessons from three types of quiet quitters

First it was the ‘Great Resignation’, then ‘the war on talent’, followed by a recession we should all fear, and now ‘quiet quitting’. This past week CEOs and HR teams around Australia have shared articles that explained the ‘quiet quitting’ trend, where burnout and apathy combine with a desire to influence how companies use their teams.

Millennial and gen Z workers are seeking to rewrite the employee rules, and while they aren’t quitting, they are just existing — which can be even worse for the health of a company.

‘Quiet quitting’ is really just another buzz term to describe a rise in employees who are part of the team but checked out. They may be disengaged, but not actively complaining about their work. They aren’t contributing but they are aware that talent is hard to come by right now, so assume they are unlikely to lose their jobs.

What it’s not is a new phenomenon. It is something all employers have dealt with, and it affects far more than the individual who has checked out. Often it isn’t their fault. It may be a matter of poor compensation versus the stress they face, or the environment doesn’t make them feel valued or supported. They don’t feel they are building anything with the team, so they just go to work and fulfil the basic requirements.

There is a big difference between leading an environment where your people feel disengaged from the vision, to when they are just trying to do their job while checked out.

One thing COVID-19 taught us was to focus on what we value.

For some, that has meant changing roles within a company to offer opportunities for increasing value and being respected for that contribution. Some have moved to completely different industries.

Intuitive leaders need to be conscious of what is going on with their people, to create a culture where people can thrive and communicate. As leaders we must also find the right people for that culture.

I have been let down by employees and I have let employees down.

The only way to get better is to look mistakes in the face. Here are three versions of “quiet quitters” I have experienced, how I’ve dealt with it, and what I could have done better.

1. The person who isn’t setting boundaries or communicating that they are overwhelmed

I’ve made the mistake of trying to motivate individuals into believing their role is critical to the success of the business. The feedback is often an apathetic ‘yeah, it’s all good’. Except isn’t. It’s all very bad, and the KPIs put in place keep not getting met.

In reality, the employee may not experience the impact of their contribution. It gets worse when the rest of the team sees this and thinks that, for whatever reason, I am tolerating mediocrity. This is the fastest way to kill motivation in your star players. In the past I have made the mistake of trying to save the individual role, rather than accept that the role may not offer the career value I’d hoped it would — or that they just cannot thrive here.

2. The person who has been in the role so long, they are bored but still hanging around                         

Sometimes a role becomes stagnant. The person can’t see any future, and it doesn’t really matter how much or how much support you give them. This is particularly common in startups where the initial founders rallied around certain players who were excited, but by year five those players are hungry for something new.

The ebb and flow of sustaining a new company requires a different mindset from that exciting startup phase. This is the person you honour for their loyalty and commitment, but their form of quiet quitting can mean you will see dropped enthusiasm and stagnant growth in the parts of the business they are responsible for. It is almost irrelevant if they are actually good at what they do. I’ve often needed to refine my expectations for the role and the individual, rather than glossing over problems simply due to longevity.  

3. The person who actually wants to make it work, but no longer has the skillset required for what the company needs

This is the hardest to identify, because they may say all the right things and send all the right signals, but they are completely checked out and overwhelmed. They feel they simply cannot deliver what the company now expects. Maybe their skillset was fine three years ago, but with changing technologies, datasets, client expectations and internal team politics, they just cannot add value the way they had hoped. They start to check out, but still maintain the enthusiasm required to get through the team and client meetings.

This must be managed carefully. This person may not even realise that they have checked out. In my experience, this has almost always been my fault. Usually the person does not have the skillset because I cast them in the role incorrectly, didn’t provide enough training for them, or didn’t have the infrastructure in place to sense check their capabilities and process. Where I’ve learned to get this element right, I’ve seen far less of this kind of checking out. 

Never forget that company leaders and board members check out too. When I see these articles with a headline suggesting CEOs should be aware of some concerning element lurking in their business, I can’t help but feel that it is likely the wake up call we need to look at our organisations, and to see how the talent fits together, how people are collaborating, and what they are gaining from being part of the adventure.