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Giving your all to a job is becoming less common, especially among workers below the age of 35. This phenomenon has been given a catchy name — quiet quitting — which describes the increasing number of workers feeling dissatisfied and disengaged with work.
But contrary to popular opinion, doing the bare minimum to stay employed isn’t the result of laziness. Often, it’s a natural response to bad employers and toxic working environments.
Only 10% of UK workers feel engaged with their jobs, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce 2024 report. Additionally, 40% say they experience daily stress, 27% report feeling sad and a fifth say they feel angry every day.
“Quiet quitting is when an employee makes an intentional decision to do the bare minimum to satisfy their employment contract and not take on anything additional,” says Rachel Grace Elliott, a career change coach. However, she adds, there are different variations of this — and it manifests differently in different people depending on their situation.
“It usually happens when an employee has worked extra hard for so long and they’ve not experienced acknowledgement or they’ve received actively bad treatment in response or they’ve actually seen someone else rewarded or equally treated for doing less. Employers often underestimate the impact of this last scenario,” Elliot explains.
Read more: Do four-day weeks improve workers’ mental health?
“It’s important to note that acknowledgement doesn’t always come in the form of bonuses or rewards. It might be speaking to an individual about how impressed you are and then exploring with them what would give them more job satisfaction in future,” she adds.
Why are workers quiet quitting and what should employers do?
One of the most common problems is when bosses make assumptions about what people need and want from work.
“When bosses lack insight into what motivates their individual employees, it can trigger quiet quitting. This can be remedied by getting curious and asking employees what drives them, and even putting together a workshop for them if they are unsure of this,” says Elliott.
“Other behaviours include lack of recognition, micromanagement, unreasonable workloads that can never be fulfilled, unclear instructions, a lack of communication, or a toxic person in the office who is not being dealt with effectively and is impacting many people around them.”
It’s also important for employers to treat all employees equally.
“Hushed hybrid” describes how some managers are creating their own rules, for example, by allowing select people to work remotely and not others. According to a survey by Owl Labs, 70% of UK managers have allowed team members to work from home, despite an official company policy mandating otherwise.
Read more: The rise of the ‘hushed hybrid’ workplace
An organisation’s lack of personal investment in their workers can also lead to quiet quitting. If a worker’s pay has remained the same but their workload and stress levels have increased, they are unlikely to feel valued by their employer. The rising cost of living can also have an impact, as someone’s wages simply won’t go as far as they used to.
It’s not just in the interests of employers to boost morale and motivation among workers. While worker disengagement costs businesses in lost productivity, quiet quitting can significantly impact mental health.
The answer to the problem isn’t to try to force people to work harder, but rather to make sure people feel supported and appreciated. One way to do this is to encourage autonomy among workers, which research shows can increase wellbeing because they feel valued. This might mean allowing people to choose their own hours or place of work, for example, by allowing remote working.
“This involves creating a culture of trust by reducing behaviours such as micromanagement, and also empowering decision making through coaching rather than telling,” says Elliott.
Intriguingly, offering a reward for some form of effort may not actually lead to greater motivation, especially when it comes to creative tasks. According to author Daniel Pink, human motivation is largely intrinsic and driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose — and less by rewards and fear of punishment.
Read more: Will the ‘right to switch off’ from work fix the burnout problem?
“That being said, it’s OK to reward people after a job has been done well, but don’t assume that’s the only reward employees want,” says Elliott. “I remember working as a lawyer and instead wanting rewards like more complex cases or an opportunity to go on a course where I could learn more. Encourage your employees to tap into their internal motivators and their engagement and productivity will increase as a natural consequence.”
Finally, supporting employees to be self-aware is also key as this is the only way they know what they really want. “One way to support self-awareness is to ask employees to think about and share what they really want and make this the norm,” she says.
“It’s important to create an environment that makes employees feel in control of their workload as opposed to creating a feeling of only showing up to get a reward. People want to feel empowered — not treated like manipulated rats in a maze.”
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