Don’t Call it “Quiet Quitting”
Call it what it is: Corporate hostility toward workers that undermines the employer-employee trust bond.
Image: Azat Valeev/Adobe Stock
A curious phenomenon is taking place as we enter the post-pandemic business world: People have become less productive and are quitting their jobs in record numbers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), productivity was down sharply in Q3 of 2021, with costs rising. Multiple service and manufacturing industries have seen a drop in productivity for most of the year, with labor turnover rising for the past few quarters to the point where we are now noticing a troubling phenomenon: a massive amount of job openings and very few of those job openings getting filled.
Fast Forward One Year
Despite the fifth-straight month of declining job openings, vacancies today are still above 10 million and have stayed there for 14 months running, well-above historical monthly averages. You would think that people would be eager to get back to work now that pandemic limitations have been mostly lifted.
What is causing the alarming decline in productivity and the historical rise in workplace attrition?
A simple answer could be that people generally like working from home and the requirement to return to the office causes resignations among those who refuse. In this scenario, businesses will need to devise new rules of workforce dynamics to stabilize and keep their employee base intact. But I think there is another factor, one that has been brewing for many years and has reached a breaking point.
A Hostile Relationship
In my time as an executive, I have seen a disturbing workplace trend that few are discussing. The relationship between company and employee has become much more hostile to employee interests in recent decades. Corporate policies and attitudes have been to restrict autonomy, shift accountability and punish dissent. Much of this is the product of weak leadership that has no interest in welfare of the employee. “If you don’t like it…leave” has been an underlying management mindset for as long as I can remember.
Why do people work for a living? For the money, of course. But this is true only to a point. The reasons differ from one worker to the next but, at some point, money becomes less important than other factors. Job security, upward mobility, hour flexibility – these are some of the intangibles that factor into the reasons why people choose to work at specific companies.
I would argue that the largest workplace intangible is respect. With respect, an employee-company trust bond is created. Without respect, employees view work only as a transactional activity, or simply a means of supporting other activities.
Morale Matters
If you don’t feel respected by the company, you won’t feel respect for the company. Employees will coast through projects, doing the minimum work to keep their job. Top producers become mercenaries that will jump to a bigger paycheck because, in the absence of respect at your current employer, you might as well get paid more by another company.
With corporate culture already a toxic mess of mandates and rules, employees have no sense of respect emanating from their companies and their productivity shows it. And now that people have gotten a taste of remote workplace technology as a stand-in for commuting to an office, hardly anyone is willing to fill those positions if office attendance is required.
Is It Just “Those Millennials?”
Some insist that traditional jobs don’t fit into the “generational values” of today’s workforce. While I agree that cultural changes have rendered much of the traditional employment model as obsolete, I don’t think a mere change of work venue or a different work-life balance will help an employee’s productivity or keep them on the payroll if the company continues to dishonor them through unreasonable rules and mandates issued in bad faith.
Let’s not forget what employees have had to endure over the past two years: Their employer took over part of their home via remote workspace, they were asked to serve as unpaid schoolteachers, and many were threatened with termination if they refused to be injected with a COVID cocktail. This treatment has caused employees to reassess their relationship with their employer and develop new work-life boundaries.
If the level of disrespect has grown to the point of mutual contempt, then the declining productivity and increased turnover are just getting started. We might be entering a long winter of lousy economic numbers, declining purchasing power and further reduction of labor force participation. All of it completely avoidable.
Don’t Call It “Quiet Quitting”
For many years, companies have ignored the growing discontent in their talent pool, which is now presenting itself as a refusal to “go the extra yard” for the company. Employees no longer view their workplace as a place to thrive and instead feel unmotivated, disengaged, and burned out. This recent notion trending in the business world is something that has been hiding in plain sight for decades – don’t call it “quiet quitting;” call it what it really is: Corporate hostility that destroys the trust bond between the company and the employee.
Crafting corporate policy mainly to protect the company from its employees has its consequences. Employers are learning the hard way that their staff no longer accepts the “golden handcuffs” notion of employment and are seeking the respect they deserve. And they’re willing to launch themselves into unknown career territory to find it.
What Capable Managers Can Do About This
Change must start at the top. The Boss needs to realize that employees have new priorities that are redefining their relationship with their work. It doesn’t mean they are bad employees; they just have evolving needs that can be met with a few adjustments to the company’s organizational model. Here are three of them:
1. Incentivize extra effort. Redefine mid-level positions to include specific, measurable tasks that are to be rewarded. Cash bonus for developing a new supply-chain methodology by year-end? Three extra vacation days for improving order shipping metrics by 10%? These are non-sales-related examples that can be negotiated at the start of the business cycle. Just putting them out there can improve morale significantly.
2. Prioritize communication. The Boss needs to make everyone aware of what’s going on by frequently putting out a written report, weekly if possible. The Boss also needs to regularly communicate individually with key personnel. Yes, all of this communication can be a pain in the ass however it is a great way to get everyone on the same page, ask curious questions and stimulate ideas across the organization.
3. Create a trusting environment. Begin by revamping discretionary HR and management policies that are perceived as hostile to employee interests. Can the company be more flexible on working from home? Can employees be granted more autonomy to make decisions and streamline processes? Can an open forum be created so employees can confidently share ideas and innovations on their work and contribute solutions without judgment or retribution?
I suspect that “quiet quitting” will be a short-term buzzword that will soon be replaced with something else. However, the legacy problem of institutionalized hostility toward employees remains in front of us, dissolving the trust bond among employees and allowing bad managers to hide behind intimidating policies and practices. A fundamental shift in their relationship to their work is putting employees in a stronger, leveraged position with employers. Companies that fail to evolve will lose their best people, and the remaining staff will continue to simply put in time.