What the "Quiet Quitting" Movement Needs to Do to Be Mission-Driven

For the ‘quiet quitting’ movement to effectively move through its current controversy, it needs to grow from a movement and transition to a mature philosophy founded on a sound foundation and business principles. Here are a few ideas and suggestions for what those might be:

1. When employers don’t set proper boundaries, employees burn out, disengage, or grow resentful of their employers.
2. A salaried position does not mean an employee has unlimited hours to work.
3. Each employee’s job description and requirements need to be regularly reviewed against their daily/weekly/monthly ‘real workload’ and be reassessed and rewritten to ensure it is current.
4. When employees quit or are fired, employers need to understand that existing employees do not have an infinite pool of hours to "pick up the slack" for those departed employees.
5. If employers expect employees to go above and beyond the job description and requirements of their role, they should also have proper measurements in place to recognize this effort, productivity, and performance, and reward it.
6. Employers need to provide healthy work environments where employees feel comfortable and supported in taking time off of work.
7. Employers need to invite, welcome, and reward employees who share their concerns and pushback about the work environment and workload burnout while also proactively working on solving such issues.

These are just a start from my perspective. Those embracing the movement should invest some time in blueprinting and building out the mission and strategy to transform the movement into an actionable plan for positive work environment change.

Employers are Worried About ‘Quiet Quitting’ Impact

With worries of an economic slowdown everywhere, productivity levels are a significant concern to company executives and management. Companies are now looking at productivity scales as a metric for excellence. Major tech companies like Google are signaling that they are slowing hiring and could lay off staff amid concerns about overall productivity.

In the wake of the global pandemic, companies and employers need to recognize:

• Employee burnout is real?— Social distancing and remote work have caused severe burnout. Global workforces and time zones have made it harder for some employees to take breaks from home. Employers need to recognize employees need to step away from the workplace for their mental health.
• Job dissatisfaction?—?Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report ?found that job dissatisfaction is at a staggering all-time high and that unhappy and disengaged employees cost the global economy nearly $8 trillion in lost productivity.
• Deepening disconnect between employees and managers?—?Gallup ?figures show only 21% of 15,001 US employees feel their organization cares for their overall wellbeing — as opposed to half of the employees during the peak of the pandemic.
• Hustle culture may be disappearing?— The decision to step away from “hustle culture” can cause tension between employees and company executives, and can also cause a rift between colleagues who may have to pick up the slack.
• Businesses aren’t families?— Stop claiming your business or work environment is like a family. It isn’t. Families don’t let their children go when they hit financial difficulties. Families also don’t threaten their children of being fired when they don’t do their chores. If you want to claim your business is like a family, back it up!

Employers shouldn’t feel threatened by the ‘quiet quitting’ movement. The movement is effectively redrawing boundaries back to the job description so that people aren’t thinking about work 24/7. While this is disruptive in a sense it isn’t a rebellion so much as a potential opportunity to realign jointly-agreed upon work-life boundaries.

Generational Differences and How to Address Them

There are potential generational differences between the?Boomers ?and?Gen-X ?executives that have embraced the ‘rise and grind’ mentality to ascend the corporate ladder, versus younger generations that tend to prioritize a better?work-life balance . Recent surveys also found that among the top concerns of the?Gen-Z ?and?Millennial ?generations is finances, with pay being the top reason employees in the demographic left their roles in the last two years.

Aside from providing employees remote-work flexibility and on-site perks at the office, workplace environments need to value employees’ moments of pushback. Making employees comfortable enough to voice their concerns before they get to the stage of “quietly” changing their pace at work. Each generation’s approach works differently but in the end, all would benefit from a better work environment.

About the Author

Bray Brockbank is CMO and VP of Strategy for Brandegy , a specialized brand and digital marketing agency for technology companies. Bray has led marketing efforts for a variety of B2B and B2C SaaS startups and tech enterprises. He has also served as a fractional CMO for several SaaS technology companies.