The causes of quiet quitting and how employers can respond
Quiet quitting is a viral phase being used among younger employees and rapidly spreading to all age groups. Quiet quitting is simply doing your job, as it is defined in your job description, and nothing more. Quiet quitters don”™t actually quit, they just work the minimum number of hours each week and nothing more.
Although the phrase is a bit negative and does not actually reflect the employee”™s outlook, it has taken an immediate hold and spread throughout the press like wildfire. A few weeks ago, investor and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O”™Leary generated headlines when he proclaimed that he would only hire people who are willing to put in “25 hours a day, eight days a week.” If someone shuts off their laptop and leaves work at 5 p.m., O”™Leary, added, that person is “not working for me.”
Employers Are to Blame, Not Employees
Employers are the ones to blame for quiet quitting because they have always controlled the narrative of “work” at the founding of this country and continue to do so today. That narrative is filled with anti-employee/pro-employer rules, laws, and employment agreements (think forced arbitration, NDAs for sex offenders, noncompete agreements for 50% of all workers, wage theft due to improper wage classifications for employees who are really nonexempt, arbitration agreements that keep company secrets from public view).
The most notorious of all old narratives is the at-will rule, which shields so much employment discrimination.
Everyone seems to be looking for the tipping point for a brand-new work culture in this country, hence all the press on remote work, surveillance and now quiet quitting. Are we there yet? Of course, but the power brokers want to quell any momentum ”” cue the consultants, naysayers, pundits, SHRM, Chamber of Commerce and so on.
If employers can kill the inertia, just like they are trying to do with remote work, then they win. Are employees too weak and decentralized to stop them? Maybe not.
Think of the Hong Kong protestors using umbrellas, masks and flash mobs organized anonymously over social media platforms, only to be put down through violence and Chinese communist dictatorship control.
But we are not China. We are a democracy where workers have rights. But employers, state and federal general assemblies and the courts want to minimize them in favor of employers. Money talks because companies have money and need more of it. But employees have information and communication power in the age of the internet.
Quiet Quitting is the New Silent Protest
Quiet quitting is different. Quiet quitters are not going to reveal themselves and will stay below the surface of working the required hours and getting the “Meets Expectation” performance review rating.
Meanwhile, employers continue in metronome fashion to require the “numbers” (a.k.a. employees) to do their tasks, remain silent, provide undivided loyalty to their masters (boss/executive leadership), rinse and repeat.
A Radical Solution
The solution is transparency in all things employment: ban the at-will rule, ban noncompete agreements (the Federal Trade Commission is currently reviewing this issue), institute termination “for cause” in every job and not just executive positions, create kinder and gentler HR departments, ban forced arbitration for all employment claims not just sex discrimination, offer free mental health services, provide cash rewards for anonymous employee tips reporting discrimination of any kind, provide longer vacations, offer equal pay for women, and on and on.
The implementation of all or some of the above solutions will create immediate employee trust and promote fully engaged employees, in comparison to the extremely high level of disengagement across all age bands of workers nationwide.
Mark P. Carey is managing partner and an employment law attorney at Carey & Associates P.C. in Southport. An earlier version of this article originally appeared on the law firm”™s blog.