Are your quiet quitters really slackers or are they your best employees?
A quick search of Google Trends shows that the term “quiet quitting” reached a crescendo in online searches just before Labor Day, at precisely the time when many employers were seriously pressuring employees to return to the office after years of remote work.
Two definitions of the term “quiet quitting” are circulating simultaneously, one that indicates an emotional separation from work responsibilities without actually quitting, and one that indicates the establishment of a better set of personal boundaries with work.
Some people brag on social media that they have “quiet quit.” What they mean is they have disengaged from their work and are doing the bare minimum to get by. They hope they are pulling one over on the boss.
Of course, leaders should not tolerate this. Still, you may want to consider whether this behavior is in retaliation for years of dedicated commitment without commensurate benefits.
However, some other “quiet quitters” are proudly declaring that they have finally set boundaries around their work. No longer will they routinely devote most of their evenings and weekends to work. No longer will they threaten their well-being, or their personal lives, with unreasonable travel schedules. This definition of “quiet quitting” is used by dedicated professionals who are quietly reclaiming their personal lives, while still trying to do their best at their jobs.
It’s this second type of quiet quitter that leaders should want to support, even if only for selfish reasons. Here’s why: Research shows that when knowledge workers grind around the clock, they lose the ability to unleash their genius in service of achieving the organization’s most significant results. High-quality knowledge work requires personal care, spiritual practices, and time with family and friends to restore run-down bodies and minds.
What the Research Says About Productivity
Long before the term “quiet quitting” became trendy, researchers investigated the optimal number of work hours to maximize productivity.
Various studies find that the optimal number of work hours per week to balance productivity, happiness, and well-being seems to be somewhere between 38-45 hours. In my experience, this should be considered as a monthly average, as every job has “crunch time”—working long and hard to get things completed that realistically require more time than allotted. The problem comes when crunch time is all the time. This was summed up succinctly by one of my clients at a pharmaceutical company, who told me, when I asked about her disappointment with her employer, “I’ve been here for seven years. It’s been ‘crunch time’ the whole time.”
Knowledge work relies on brainpower. And brainpower relies on optimal brain function, which is affected by both physical and emotional well-being. In the same way that carpenters using rusty, dull saws can expect decreased productivity, knowledge workers who work so often that they neglect their physical and emotional health can also expect decreased productivity.
The bottom line is that knowledge workers need physical and emotional health—as well as creativity—to do their jobs at peak performance. Given these three essential components of knowledge work, the type of “quiet quitter” who protects these fundamental requirements will increase their productivity and success.
I recommend employers embrace this version of quiet quitting, but do so by ditching that phrase; instead, call it “supporting appropriate work-life balance,” and share with your team specifically what you mean.
What the Research Says About Quiet Quitting
Before “quiet quitting” became trendy, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business interviewed 100 knowledge workers at a global consulting firm with an always-on work culture. She also had access to their performance reviews.
The study found that thirty-one percent of men and eleven percent of women were quietly resisting the pervasive culture of excessive work. They did this by leaving the office early to attend school functions for their children or by trying to replace far-away clients with locals, in order to reduce travel time.
This cohort of workers maneuvered behind-the-scenes, without calling attention to their boundary-setting strategies. In other words, they were pioneering the art of quiet quitting.
And it worked. Professor Erin Reid found these workers fared the same in performance reviews as colleagues working 80 hours per week.
However, another cohort in the study was not secretive. They did not hide the fact that they were deliberately setting boundaries to create a work-life balance, and they did suffer during performance reviews.
What About the “Bad” Kind of Quiet Quitter?
Maybe you do have employees who are “faking it” on your team. Maybe these workers actually are trying to get by doing the bare minimum. Sure, you can weed them out, or “quiet fire” them), but proceed with caution. This could be a chicken and egg situation. You need to ask whether these employees are responding to a company culture that worked them into the ground without proportionate benefit.
Burnout, which can look like quiet quitting, often appears as disengagement and it often results from expending too much effort for too little reward.
People who are checking out may not be bad employees; they may have turned into bad employees because of an unsupportive company culture. If you suspect this is the case, a burnout recovery plan can be useful in helping them to set appropriate boundaries to rediscover their work-life balance. Without addressing the problem at the root, firing them could backfire, causing your company to be seen as a bad place to work.
So Why Does Quiet Quitting Need to Be Quiet?
Your organization will be better off in the long run if you create a company culture that fosters productivity and supports employees in offering their best selves everyday.
Leaders should want their employees to set appropriate boundaries, at least in the way defined at the start of this article, where workers lead well-rounded lives and can do their best work because of it.
Downtime is important to high-quality knowledge work.
Teams Need Workflow Management Skills
To create the conditions where employees can openly set boundaries and limit work time, companies need to equip them with workflow management skills.
Most professionals don’t have the appropriate collection of habits and behaviors to successfully manage all of their commitments, communication, and information, both personally and professionally.
Workflow management skills empower knowledge workers with a deliberate, thoughtful system by which everyone in the organization communicates and completes tasks.
Here are some ways to evaluate whether you (or your team, if you have one), have workflow management skills that empower you to work efficiently and effectively:
- You can successfully manage distractions and more often complete tasks, rather than find partially done activities lurking in hidden windows on your computer screen. (If this is a challenge for you or your team, look into attention management skills.)
- You can easily track all responsibilities currently on your plate, and you can prioritize effectively to make the best use of your time. (The more common approach to this is storing tasks in some combination of sticky notes, flagged emails, notebooks, appointments on your calendar, and one or more apps or digital lists. In this case, you likely need task management skills.)
- You are making the best use of the software and apps available to you. (It’s not the tools themselves, it’s how you use the tools that makes the difference).
- You spend more time being thoughtfully proactive and less time being reactive.
- You have more days where you feel productive and accomplished, and fewer days when you feel like you were busy all day but you got “nothing” done.
- Information in your organization is primarily self-serve, so your team members can communicate more asynchronously and have fewer “asap” requirements.
Help Your Workers to Openly Set Boundaries
Set up your organization to maximize productivity by equipping employees with a workflow management system. Once they have the appropriate skills for managing a full workload, they’ll be able to get more done in less time and support an appropriate work-life balance. Then they will be free to “quiet quit” out loud.
You’ll reduce individual team-member burnout and overcome organizational bottlenecks. Even better, your team will be empowered to achieve more of their most important results on a daily basis (good for the organization), feel more accomplished (good for the employee), and have something left over to give their families and their communities (good for the world)—win, win, win.
