Sept. 19, 2022 "Quiet quitting is nonsense: Expecting all staff to work above and beyond is a mistake": Today I found this article by Sarah O'Connor on the Financial Post:
Employers have been trying to get inside their employees’ heads for more than a century. In 1920,
Whiting Williams, a former personnel director in a steel company, even went undercover as a labourer before penning a book called
What’s on the worker’s mind: by one who put on overalls to find out.
This year, a popular video on TikTok about “quiet quitting” has sent employee motivation experts into overdrive.
According to Gallup, about half of Americans are “quiet quitters,” which it defines as people who are “not going above and beyond at work and just meeting their job description.”
HR specialists and consultants have been quick to jump in with advice on how to fix the problem. An article in Harvard Business Review urged managers to ask themselves:
“Is this a problem with my direct reports,
or is this a problem with me and my leadership abilities?”
I don’t think it’s a problem at all. First, the Gallup survey data suggests this is neither new nor a trend.
Just under a third of U.S. workers were “engaged”
and almost a fifth were “actively disengaged” in the second quarter of this year (Gallup defines “quiet quitters” as the group which is neither).
The proportions have wobbled a little over time but are completely in line with the average since 2000.
Second, I would suggest that
if your staff turn up every day and do exactly what you ask of them,
they aren’t “quiet quitting,”
they’re “working.”
Some people will always be driven by
ambition,
enjoyment,
perfectionism
or insecurity
to do more than is asked of them,
but if you expect everyone to do that, by definition it isn’t “above and beyond” any more.
Indeed, companies which have built their business model on people constantly going “above and beyond” their job descriptions are on dangerous ground.
Some of the rail disruption in the U.K. this summer was a case in point: operators such as Avanti West Coast relied for years on staff voluntarily working extra shifts on their days off; when staff withdrew their goodwill, the service fell over.
Similarly, many companies in the video games industry have relied on “crunch” (a period of very long working hours) to meet deadlines.
Some in the industry say this has evolved into a permanent “crunch culture.”
According to a survey by the International Game Developers Association in 2019,
42 per cent of developers said crunch time was expected at their workplace
and only eight per cent were paid for overtime.
Shaun Rutland, chief executive of games company Hutch Games Ltd., says there can be camaraderie in extreme hours when you’re young,
but it also damages people’s health and relationships to the ultimate detriment of the firm.
He remembers having to work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for months as a youngster.
“I was so grateful to get the job working in games, I was like: ‘this is it, I’m going to do everything I can,’ (but) it made me so ill.”
Nor is it productive to overwork people. A study by Erin Reed, a management professor at McMaster University in Canada, found managers could not tell the difference between those who worked 80-hour weeks, and those who just pretended to.
Implicit in the corporate panic over “quiet quitting” is something deeper as well:
the idea these people are “psychologically unattached” to their employers
because their “engagement needs are not being fully met,” as Gallup puts it.
But this is mushy ground to wade into.
What if someone loves their work,
but not the organization they do it for, or vice versa?
What if “purpose” matters for some people but not for others?
What if some only do their job for money but they’re still really good at it?
My advice to employers is to
get out of employees’ heads,
stop worrying about whether they love you or not,
and focus on their output.
Are they doing a good job, or aren’t they?
That’s not to say there is no point in asking workers how they feel.
But if you must do “engagement” surveys, my experience of speaking to workers over more than a decade would suggest you only need to ask three questions.
Do you think your work is harming your health?
Do you have a decent line manager?
And do you think you’re paid fairly?
At its heart, the “quiet quitting” kerfuffle speaks to an unhealthy understanding of the relationship between companies and their staff.
Employers don’t need to cater to employees’ every psychological need,
and employees don’t need to be passionate about their employers.
How about a simple contractual relationship of mutual respect
and clearly defined obligations?
I’m going to call it “work for grown-ups.” Now I just need to make a TikTok video about it.
© 2022 The Financial Times Ltd
Quiet quitting is nonsense: All employees can't work above and beyond | Financial Post
When you hear a manager, supervisor or anyone above you say, "We need you to give 110%!" Look them straight in the eye and say, "Going to pay me 110% of what I'm making now? Cause 110% isn't sustainable. I'm gonna burn out so therefore I'll need the financial resources to sustain myself and family after I leave my position due to you asking me to run above the recommended operating guidelines."
Make a conscious effort to do the absolute bare minimum, max out your Friday and Monday "sick" days and wonder why you're always the first one to get laid off.
most employers have no clue, bud. get a grip.
Sept. 23, 2022 "'They're in a state of fear': CEOs are worried about quiet quitting": Bloomberg:
CEOs are worried about quiet quitting.
As news of the trend flooded the internet, human resources companies, consultants, law firms and even artificial intelligence startups have jumped in to offer advice on how to prevent and combat it.
By all accounts there is demand: Leaders at large and well-known companies in finance, tech and health care are very concerned, said Ben Granger, chief workplace psychologist at survey firm Qualtrics.
“It’s pretty rare that a lot of leaders in major organizations would bring this up to us within as short of a time as this has been talked about in the media,” he said. “I don't see that a lot.”
But executives don’t know what to do about it.
Human resource professionals say leaders are concerned about whether
they can rely on their employees if there’s a recession
— or if they can afford to fire and replace quiet quitters in a tight labor market,
Granger said.
Leaders are worried they won’t be able to spot it spreading under their noses.
“A lot of leaders and clients I work with, some for the first time in 30 years, they’re in a state of fear as an employer.” said Erica Dhawan, workplace consultant and author of a book about remote and hybrid work. “They feel they have to keep people that aren’t performing.”
Especially scary for leaders is the “invisible” nature of the trend, according to Granger.
In a remote or hybrid environment, the classic signs that an employee is checked out, like tardiness and absenteeism, can be harder to spot.
While their first reaction is often to blame quiet quitting on laziness, Granger said many come to realize that it’s actually a management problem.
There’s even an artificial intelligence startup claims to offer a solution,
analyzing emails and Slack messages to detect
engagement,
burnout
and turnover
risk among employees.
However, chief human resource officers tend to be less freaked out about all the talk of quiet quitting than others in the C-suite, according to Caroline Walsh, vice president in the human resources practice at consulting firm Gartner. Since they’ve spent years focusing on and talking about burnout, the phenomenon comes as less of a surprise.
They could be underestimating the issue. More than half of HR professionals from a range of industries surveyed in late August were concerned about quiet quitting, according to a Society for Human Resource Management poll of over 1,200.
Yet only about a third think it’s happening in their own organization, a perception that doesn't align with Gallup’s recent estimate that a full 50 per cent of the US workforce can be considered quiet quitters.
While it’s hard to say how much more quiet quitting is happening since the trend went viral, Granger said the fact more people are talking about it is itself significant because it’s more likely to catch on and spread.
“Now you’ve got a big problem,” he said.
“If you get into a situation where organizations start to see this tip,
and now there’s massive amounts of quiet quitting happening,
that is almost certainly going to lead to some massive downstream effects on the business.”
'They're in a state of fear': CEOs are worried about quiet quitting - BNN Bloomberg
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