The Hard Truths - but Simple Answers - to ‘Quiet Quitting’

Quiet quitting is all the rage amongst employees as we push ourselves across the finish line of 2022. Trending on YouTube and LinkedIn, a hot topic on NPR and various podcasts, and occupying headlines in Forbes and The NY Times, you’d have to actively bury your head in the sand to remain oblivious to the concept.

Digno was designed and built to both correct and prevent counterproductivity in the workplace. So while not a hard truth but rather a simple one - establishing some sort of formal and ongoing feedback system for employees is key to avoiding trends like this.

Imagine you have an employee on staff who is effectively quietly quitting. Flying beneath the radar, barely scratching the surface of the status quo, disengaging from anything outside of their standard workload, and all the while, as a manager, your plate is too full to really do much about it. Your awareness of how costly it is to fire and onboard new employees, on top of your overflowing work load, prevents you from really engaging with this employee, passively accepting the bare minimum as appropriate.

The Easy Way Out

Tracking employee productivity and engagement in real time provides any manager or supervisor with accurate up-to-date information on each and every employee and their output or contribution towards individual and team goals. If an employee is intentionally (or passively) quietly quitting, within a matter of one or two weeks, you would have sufficient data to illustrate the decline in work quality or presence. At that point, the choice is yours. You would have sufficient data to terminate the employee should that be necessary. Why would you keep such an employee on staff?

The Long Game

Then there’s option two - reengagement. Let’s say upon initial hire, you saw true potential and promise in this employee. You engaged with the employee to develop a productive communication style and a professional relationship, so the foundation exists to have an honest conversation. This is an opportunity for the individual to recalibrate and once again demonstrate value to the organization. It’s an opportunity for the manager or supervisor to engage with the individual, to have a challenging conversation, but one that paves a clear path forward with explicit action-items, promoting a career path beyond the current organization for the employee.

Create a Playbook for Re-engagement

At the individual level - people are losing interest in the traditional “work” model. People are discovering they can build a successful career and flexible lifestyle through freelance and gig work. They’re no longer willing to “clock in” for eight to ten hours of work five days a week anymore. So the model must evolve.

• Implement a technological system that is task-based, project-based, and outcome-based 
• Don’t hyper-focus on the amount of time an employee spends “working” - the primary focus should be whether or not they complete their work
• Promote transparency and accountability through technology - track accomplishments and engagement via this system
• Establish a work environment (remote or hybrid) that fits the needs of the employee - simultaneously conserve office resources and give employees the freedom to come into the office for a few hours here or there as it serves their life and routine
• Utilize the system to track productivity and performance management as opposed to endless hours of useless meetings

I think we’ll see new companies emerge - and succeed - as well as the bottom line of any existing organization continue to grow if we’re able to let go of our unjustified attachment to traditional work models. New generations of working individuals are making their demands, and what they aren’t vocalizing, they are demonstrating through action - or lack thereof. 

What’s the harm in giving employees what they are asking for? A better quality of life leads to higher productivity, motivation, happiness, energy, and satisfaction. We’ve been so committed to the way things “used to be” that we’re missing growth opportunities solely due to a lack of flexibility and stubbornness. 

Quietly quitting, are they? Let’s re engage.