What’s with the ‘quiet quitting’?
Quiet quitting is a term bandying around at the moment. It’s when instead of actually quitting, an employee pulls back from going above and beyond. I reckon it’s just a new way of saying not giving the ‘discretionary effort’.
Don’t we just love to create new names for old things? Like ’forest bathing’ for example. Which is just bushwalking but sounds fancier. Anyway, I digress.
With burnout at record levels, people are making decisions about whether it’s worth giving as much as they have been. I think this is a worthwhile conversation to have with ourselves, and the people we work with.
Kenneth Matos, Director of People Science at Culture Amp says; “Employees want to re-establish the belief that what they’re putting in is equal to what they’re getting out. If they can’t increase what they get, they’re going to decrease what they put in”.
This makes sense. If I give - but don’t get back - then the balance is not right. But I do think we are missing a really important piece of the puzzle. The conversation.
We need to be talking to key people to let them know this is happening. These decisions are powerful. Both for the individual trying to create healthy boundaries and essential for employers and leaders to know the impact of pushing people too hard.
This is good conflict. Good conversations like this are likely to create some level of tension, of course we don’t want to hear that our people are pulling back. But we do need to hear it. Otherwise, nothing will change. Worst case we could lose the whole person, not just their above and beyond commitment. People are happy to give their investment, if they believe they are equally invested in.
What’s the pondering from this?
If you lead people, do you know how they are feeling about their give/get ratio? If you don’t feel like it’s equal – are you having the conversations you need to.
Do you create healthy conflict to get healthy change? I hope so. We need to hear your voice. Whether we like it, or not.
If you lead teams, or businesses, and want to know what it looks like to create sustainable healthy conflict, then come to my free online event October 17th.
Register here.