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Let’s reframe quiet quitting. Let’s call it positive organizational realignment instead.  

So, what is quiet quitting, and how can we leverage it to improve our organizations and create more engagement for employees? Quiet quitting is doing the job requirements satisfactorily without taking on extra responsibilities, extraneous work without purpose, or seeking out more work after what’s been assigned has been completed.  

It’s time to see quiet quitting as an opportunity to get curious and have a conversation around engagement. The greatest engagement tools? Enablement, learning, and development that are tailored, aligned, and exciting!   

Of course, we want our workforce to be committed and engaged in their roles. But rather than lower expectations or ignore the problem of disengagement, we might see someone we suspect is quiet quitting and use the opening to get curious and ask questions. Are they happy with what they're doing?  We might holistically investigate the break in alignment and discover what, if anything, we can change or adjust for individual contributors or teams to increase happiness and relatability to the work. The process and the data we collect could also be helpful to the whole organization if such curiosity sessions could be scaled and aligned to put engagement more at the forefront.  

While quiet quitting often has a negative connotation, and mass attrition, as we saw with the Great Resignation, can be a big problem for organizations, there are also bright spots. If folks who aren’t a fit or aren’t happy are leaving, companies can embark on a journey to find alignment. By reframing this trend in a positive narrative, leaders can evaluate positions, duties, and responsibilities on their teams and use the trend as an opportunity to assess what is going right and what is due for a change. It can be an occasion for curiosity and bring teams closer together as they reconsider the fitness, efficiency, and happiness of individuals. It could lead to more planning and talking about goals and vision.  

Moreover, the time seems ripe for a look at what kind of engagement and enablement tools and resources we can provide to curb disengagement and recommit to the individual. Let’s call it the Great Reframing. 

Shifting the Conversation to Engagement 

Recent data from Gallup found that employee engagement dropped from 34% in 2021 to 32% in 2022. Employees who reported being actively disengaged increased from 16% to 18% during that time. It was also noted that certain populations were becoming disaffected, including younger workers, women, and people who were required to be onsite daily but whose roles could be remote to fulfill duties. These diverse sets of workers saw the biggest drops in engagement.  

The data provide signs that aspects of the work being done and the workplace itself are main contributors to declining engagement. The good news is that there may be ways to adjust or realign business priorities with engagement data to add resilience to the operations. That discussion is a shift we can embrace to make improvements for all stakeholders in the business relationship. 

For perspective, while employee engagement has declined in recent years, it is higher than it was a decade ago (30%), according to Gallup. Between 2000 and 2010, engagement dipped as low as 26% on two occasions. So, all is not lost! Quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, and COVID-19 have provided pain. But positively reframing the conversation might help us see that this reshuffling can be a benefit. Maybe it will lead to innovations in how we engage workers. 

In the vein of reframing, let’s focus on finding the best person for the job and/or the best job for the person and work to engage them. In other words, alignment may be the best practice to emphasize. We can look at our teams and the associated job descriptions and workflows to ensure that what we're asking folks to do aligns with their interests and goals and encourages them to do things they enjoy.  

If someone pulls back to demonstrate their discontent or disengagement, use it as an opportunity to get curious and to show care for them and their role. An example may be to reframe a thought like “this person isn’t doing their job” to “are there pieces we can shift or adjust to better suit this person’s talent?”   

Making It a Positive 

The past few years have produced a renaissance in the workplace and shuffled the deck in a way that seems irreversible. The trend has become a paradigm shift that now emphasizes the person at work and not the work the person is bound to. Quiet quitting may be a data insight and a new business principle to understand and embrace rather than see as a fleeting trend. Workplaces have long tried to recapture the workforce that departed and changed their priorities during and following COVID-19. But workers are different now, and our attitudes should change toward what people are willing and able to contribute.  

So how do we deal with this shift? Railing against it doesn’t work and may lead to further attrition and resignations. Failing to retain talent can lead to a massive hit to your bottom line. Instead, embrace, leverage, and capitalize on the shift.  

You might use the inspiration of quiet quitting to return to the organizational makeup and look at who is doing what and why. Use it to inspire a quality-assurance test. What are people’s roles and responsibilities? Do they align with goals and move the organization’s mission forward? If not, is it time for a revision or update? Are you having conversations with workers about their roles, duties, and goals moving forward?  

Those questions can be empowering and help reframe the negativity around quiet quitting so that you can use data and insight to empower your teammates and retain talent. The conversations can also lead to learning plans and ways to provide new or improved methods of training and development.  

Check out Employers Council’s Training and Events tab to explore options and opportunities for training and engaging your workforce. If you have any questions, please email our Member Experience Team.