Quiet quitting and employee loyalty

If you’re a millennial, Gen Z or just active on TikTok, you might’ve heard about quiet quitting. To some, quiet quitting means doing the bare minimum at work. To others, it means setting boundaries to improve their work-life balance. The pandemic has shifted people’s priorities and made many of us re-evaluate what we want from our lives and jobs.

But what does quiet quitting mean for your business? As leaders, how do you know if it’s happening in your organization and affecting employee engagement?

How to spot quiet quitting?

Managers and business leaders need to first consider if quiet quitting is an issue in their organizations. After this, they can decide to tackle this issue by making changes. But first you need to spot whether one of your team members is quiet quitting. Here’s how:

Key signs of quiet quitting:

Regular disengagement
Minimal productivity
Isolation from other team members
Withdrawal from any non-mandatory conversations, activities or tasks
Not speaking up or acting during meetings
Teammates complaining about having to pick up the slack

The defining factor in all of this is that you can’t expect to motivate your entire workforce with a “one size fits all” approach. Not everyone in your team might be quiet quitting, and those that do won’t have the same reasons. Due to all the changes in the world, people are evolving, and so must workplaces.

How to improve employee engagement and loyalty?

If you notice that a team member is showing signs of quiet quitting, it’s time to take action to improve their work experience. The way to create employee engagement is through supportive leadership that encourages meaningful work. It’s becoming clear that we all value being part of a team that’s doing something important. Creating an inclusive workplace with a culture that allows everyone to feel like they can contribute to a higher purpose is imperative. Managers should motivate their teams, make them feel listened to and engaged in their work.

Employee Value Proposition

Is your Employee Value Proposition up to standard? It’s important to identify what motivates your workforce, and what brought them to work at your organization in the first place. Promoting your company’s culture, values or sustainability goals could be a way to re-engage the disengaged. If these values aren’t reflective of the modern working world, it’s time to address them.

You can’t expect to retain all your workforce forever. All of us have sought new challenges at different times in our careers. While it’s important to meet your employees’ needs, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we can’t drive all of them to be motivated 100% of the time. Instead, we should consider what we can do to keep our teams happy, while accepting the inevitability that some will move on to new adventures. Remember, you’ll always need to bring in new talent and when you do, it’s important to welcome them into an inspiring working culture; one that compliments and nurtures their lives outside of work.