How to Prevent your Employees from “Quiet Quitting”

With almost 500,000 likes and 42,000 shares, this TikTok video on “Quiet quitting” has blown up on social media.  From NPR to the New York Times, everyone is talking about it.  Miz Management will take a big leap of faith and assume that most of her readers are not surfing through TikTok to learn of the latest workplace trends.  And when she did an informal poll of her mostly Boomer and Gen X colleagues, there was a lot of misconceptions of what quiet quitting is. 

First let’s start with what it isn’t.  It’s not quitting your job.  It’s not doing the bare minimum needed to not get fired.  It’s not punching in and punching out of your job and not caring about it when not on the clock.

So what, exactly, it is?  It’s a reaction brought on by burnt out employees that had blurry work/life boundaries during the pandemic.  It’s a response to the frustration that companies are achieving record breaking profits that are being shared by executives and shareholders, without any benefit to employees.  It’s a backlash to being expected to check email and respond to work demands at all hours of day/night/weekend.  It’s a cry for balance and an appeal for a direct correlation between excelling in your performance and your compensation. 

To be fair, it’s a tight labor market and employees have the upper hand.  However, in any market, it’s important that employers provide the right environment for their people to be engaged and thrive in their roles.  If you want to make sure your employees don’t quiet quit on you, here are four suggestions:

1. Respect Work/Life Balance – Don’t expect your employees to respond to your 8 pm email unless it’s truly an emergency issue that needs immediate resolution.  Don’t schedule your team “bonding Zoom” meeting during family dinner time.
   
   
2. Measure the Right Things – Unfortunately, our culture often values looking busy over actual productivity.  Measure actual performance quality and output, not whether you see your employee’s status light as “online” on Saturday afternoon.
   
   
3. Compensate Fairly – It’s hard to feel engaged working for a company with large profits and tiny raises.  If you’re measuring the right things and see good performance, then bust open the wallet for raises and bonuses.  Money can’t (entirely) buy happiness, but not paying fairly is a sure path to quiet quitting (or “working your wage”). 
   
   
4. Nurture Their Career – Are you providing performance feedback?  Offering learning opportunities?  Providing a varied and interesting workload?  While not all jobs have the ability to do these things, to the extent that you can, try to help your people achieve new career milestones.

Quiet quitting is ultimately just setting appropriate boundaries and, if necessary, scaling back when your boss has unrealistic expectations, isn’t appreciating your work, or investing in your career.  If employers do the right things, your staff won’t be quiet quitting, they’ll be loudly staying!

You Can't Have it All

Women today have a tremendous amount of choices. We can get the best education and then choose to stay home or we can pursue our careers while having a family. Of course, there are many women who don't really have choices, who due to their economic situation simply have to work. For them the idea of "choice" is moot because they need to pay the bills and "choice" is a luxury they can not afford. But for a moment, let me focus on those lucky ones who do have choices. Who can work, scale back their careers, or even stay home full time to be with their children. 

While it may seem that these women can craft their ideal lifestyle, the reality is YOU CAN'T HAVE IT ALL. Magazines such as Working Mother will show some beautiful woman who has a high power career, is of course gorgeous, has 2 or 3 wonderful kids, bakes cookies for her kid's class parties and still finds time to sew homemade Halloween costumes. These few freaks of nature make the rest of us feel like we should be able to "have it all". Anything less means we're inadequate. 

Well, my experience is that most of us human mortals simply can't have it all. Even when you have choices, something has to give. In fact, my idea of "work/life balance" is when your work life and home life are both equally miserable. But seriously, while you can't have it all, you can have a fulfilling work and home life. Think of it as an "all you can eat buffet". You can eat a little bit of a variety of foods, or you can tank up on the "peel and eat" shrimp and forego the other tasty options. 

As for Miz Management, I have been very lucky to have a flexible career for a wonderful engineering firm. Due to their flexible work environment, I have had the opportunity to work part time for 15 years. I was able to progress in my career, and even advance up the ladder, while working three days per week. This gave me a couple of days a week to hang out with my kids, participate in baby play groups, chaperone the occasional apple picking field trip, and do the laundry. But wait, was it that easy?? Was my work situation completely ideal? Not exactly. My "balance" meant that some things made it into my life and others didn't. So here is the tally of what made it into my "balance" portfolio and what I had to throw away.

1. Days per week. Although my official schedule was three days per week, I found myself working at least a bit on my "off" days. Even an hour of checking emails and returning a few phone calls made a big difference. People knew that I was reachable in the event of an emergency. I made myself available (within reason) to make sure that my work obligations were being met even on my "off days".
   
   
2. Day Care Choices. I chose day care options that ensured that I could be at work when I needed to be there. While some moms chose nannies, who can call in sick or go away on vacations, I used day care centers that are open every day except for a few standard holidays. While day care centers were more work for me (bringing the kids there and back) and more costly than a nanny, I felt I needed the reliability of a good day care center.
   
   
3. Home Cooked Family Dinners...not. I don't have yummy home cooked meals every night (I wish I bought stock in Lean Cuisine). We also don't have a Norman Rockwell family dinner every night. We eat in shifts and we eat a lot of prepared foods and take out. And yet, my kids are all healthy and the right weight for their height, so I'm probably not goofing up too much here.

And lest I forget, I also have a very supportive husband who supports my career and makes lunches for the kids every day. I don't have it all, but I found a mix that (usually) works. You'll have to make tough choices to find your balance and choose what's important and what you can let go. Ultimately, that's what we all need to do. As Mick Jagger would say "you can't always get what you want...but if you try sometimes, you might find...you get what you need".