Quiet quitting has become a rising trend recently among employees and on the Internet alike. While employees justify quietly quitting as their need to regain work/life balance, managers are puzzled, trying to discover the reasons for this phenomenon. And they also feel frustrated because unlike genuine quitting which is straightforward, quiet quitting can be difficult to identify.
Because quiet quitters fall in between fully engaged and fully disengaged workers and make up to 50 % of the American workforce nowadays according to Gallup poll. In other words, quiet quitters tend to do the minimum needed to keep their jobs, refusing to go above and beyond at work. And this is a well-known issue that managers have battled for years, regardless of the name.
So if you want your productivity rates to remain high and unaffected by this raving workplace trend you need to find ways to identify quiet quitters, the reasons for this engagement drop, and steps you need to take to address this issue and get your employee performance back on track.
How to Identify Quiet Quitters in Your Team
Some of the critiques of the quiet quitting trend believe that employees started quietly quitting while working remotely away from managers’ watchful eyes. But you can’t blame remote work for decreased employee engagement. Especially when most businesses started using advanced monitoring software for employees to track their remote workers' activities and gain a clear understanding of every minute spent at work.
An efficient employee monitoring app can be a reliable ally in identifying workers prone to quiet quitting. When you start tracking and recording employees' activities within work hours, you’ll gain insightful data about the way they use different apps and websites, and the projects and tasks they’re working on.
In this way, you’ll be able to discern potential changes in productivity and engagement over time. And when some of your highly productive employees start doing the bare minimum at work, you can address this issue and find the reasons for this change in their approach to work.
Don’t be surprised if you find that most reasons for employees quiet quitting are closely related to your leadership style and practices. Here are the most common reasons why workers decide to step back and drive their performance to a bare minimum.
The Reasons Behind Quiet Quitting
A massive survey encompassing over 10 million workers from 150 countries finds 12 leadership mistakes that may drive your employees to quiet quitting. Here you’ll find the most impactful ones.
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Lack of psychological safety
The manager fails to create a trustful and safe work environment where employees can speak freely about different issues that may prevent them from fulfilling their potential
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Lack of trust
Employees will feel disappointed and even betrayed if leaders tend to make promises and then don’t follow through. Once you lose your employees’ trust it’s just a matter of time before you’ll start losing them.
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Vague and scarce feedback
By providing frequent feedback you’ll show your team that you care about their professional development. Also, they may get valuable insight into their performance. So if you stick to brief annual employee reviews, your employees may stop making an extra effort at work, thinking that their achievements aren’t recognized. Luckily employee monitoring system data can help you create and deliver detailed, real-time feedback, keeping your employees in sync with their performance.
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Lack of meeting efficiency
Are your team meetings effective, actionable, and informative? Or your employees often wonder why they are attending obsolete meetings, wasting the time they could otherwise dedicate to focused work on key projects. If this is the case, your employees may slip into disengagement easily, finding it difficult to focus on critical tasks.
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Absence of open communication
If you don’t foster open and honest communication with your team members, you can’t create a healthy and productive work environment. Then don’t be surprised when your productivity rates start to plummet due to quiet quitting.
Slow the Quiet Quitting Trend with Effective Leadership Training
The good news is that all these issues are solvable and you can turn these leadership mistakes into effective practices with adequate training. But, first, you need to find out what aspects of your leadership need improvement. So first conduct a survey on this topic and listen carefully to your employee feedback. This will help you take the necessary steps to improve your leadership skills and become a manager that attracts and retain employees rather than driving them away.
Once you see the survey results, use this data to see what aspects of your work need improvement. Then create specific training sessions that will boost weak leadership areas, while holding on to effective practices.
After you and your managers complete specific leadership training, start replacing the old, inefficient practices with recently acquired ones and watch how the atmosphere in your workplace changes.
Using information about employee performance collected via the employee work tracking system can show you how this shift in leadership affects employee productivity. You’ll most likely see that securing psychological safety, keeping your promises, and fostering open communication can get your employees back on track turning them from quiet quitters to fully engaged team members.
