Is There a Cure for "Quiet Quitting"?

0:00When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

0:30Caroline Webb:Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweetgreen's fall harvest menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweetgreen featuring fall's best dressed. Make your move. Order on the Sweetgreen app. Hello everyone. Welcome to Management Tip Unpacked. It's our monthly LinkedIn live series where we'll help you make sense of your career, the workplace, and the wider business landscape.

1:11I'm Nicole Smith with Harvard Business Review. So quiet quitting. By now you've heard of the term, maybe even have thought about quietly quitting yourself, but why is this a buzzword now? Workers have been disengaged for decades and quiet quitting is a real phenomenon for managers that they need to watch out for. Today, we want to go behind the buzz and the trends and instead get to the truth behind quiet quitting. Before we have this conversation, we're going to ask you that you put your comments in LinkedIn and the LinkedIn live stream. And joining us today for the conversation is Caroline Webb.

1:46She's an economist, executive coach, and author of How to Have a Good Day, Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life. I'll be starting us off with a few questions for Caroline. and when you put your questions in the comments don't forget to tell us where you're from hey caroline hi there it's great to be here thank you likewise uh so you know i have to ask you what does quiet quitting even means it seems like collectively people have come up with uh not one solid definition but you when we talked earlier said that it can mean different things to different people and you've noticed two types of definitions have emerged maybe yeah very much so there's a huge range and i think anybody joining us today has seen that range i think on the one hand there's the very negative passive tone which is you know i'm doing the bare minimum to not get fired and that might be you know leaving early it might be arriving late it might mean checking out of things that people were previously doing it might be ignoring emails although you know that probably happens plenty all the time anyway um but then on the other side i think there is a version of this and i'm also seeing which is a more proactive version which is where people are being clear about the boundaries that they want to set and they're communicating those openly boundaries between work and rest of life boundaries between what's core and non-core in their roles and I think there are these two very different flavors that run through everything that we see on quiet quitting and I'm sure we're going to get into how to do something with the positive side and perhaps less so with the negative side so what do you think is influencing whether people see this as a positive thing or negative thing?

3:21Well, I think that a lot of people don't know that it is possible to actually assert what you need at work. And I'm not saying it's always easy. But if I think back over my own career, I think about these small negotiations that happen really from a very early age about what I knew I needed in order to do my best work. And of course, there are certain managers who are very skilled and very adept and deft at encouraging these conversations. And honestly, the workplaces where we see that there's less quiet quitting are where managers are very skilled at having these conversations and not letting it be on the employee's shoulders to come forward with discussions about their boundaries.

4:03So I think there's lots that managers can do to create an environment for the right conversations to happen, for the positive version of quiet quitting to be present. It just seems to me like management and employees are on two different planes here. Right. And how whether they feel like they how they have to deal with it or what it means or what it could be for the organization and work. Do you think that's true? Well, it's interesting because if you look at burnout rates, because burnout is so much part of what's the backdrop to this. If you look at burnout rates, you look at stress, and you look at where some of the richest data on this is, which is from Gallup's State of the Global Workplace.

4:42I've been tracking the data there for a long time. It's actually one of the things that drove me to write my own book, How to Have a Good Day, because the level of engagement in the workplace has always been quite low. So one in five people feel really engaged by the work. That means four in five. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.

5:17Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

5:30Caroline Webb:Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweetgreen's fall harvest menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweetgreen featuring fall's best dressed. Make your move. Order on the Sweetgreen app. five don't. And when you look at the data on managers, it's not that it's better for managers. You see that managers are often in the middle between the stress that's coming down from the top, the stress that's coming up from the bottom.

6:15So, you know, most of us have a boss, even CEOs will have a board to think about. And so I think that this is an experience that many of us are having and thinking about how do I renegotiate what I think good looks like in terms of my relationship, my psychological relationship with my work. Well, there's like you are saying here, I mean, it's this has been happening for a long time. It's nothing new. But one of my colleagues, Evelyn said, is quiet quitting really silent? Is it really quiet? That implies like what's happening in the background. Yeah. But really, is this having a loud impact? Yeah.

6:53I mean, we all, we can all think of maybe maybe we've been that person but we can all certainly think of someone in our workplace that is that person who is not motivated and not engaged I mean every workplace comedy has a character like this and you know it's not quiet it's very very obvious and actually you know I would say it's not just visually obvious if someone is sitting back it's not just practically obvious if they're not replying to a request it's actually quite deeply neurologically obvious because what happens is in any room emotions between two people are contagious and our emotions tend to spread and of course you know the strongest emotion wins so to speak and you see this in study after study that you can just be together for 30 seconds and this can be virtual as well and you start to see uh the the emotions sticking up between people and that's negative or positive so you can be a force for good but there's no doubt that if you have someone come into a room or come into a virtual room and they're not in a good mood everybody senses it everybody feels it and it affects everybody and so i don't think it's quiet at all yeah yeah i would agree with that i want you to help managers out here is there anything good that can come out of quiet quitting what's what can come out of it that we all appreciate it yeah so i i think i think this has the power to be a transformative moment.

8:20Sometimes when you attach new language to an old idea or an old phenomenon, it's easy to say, well, this isn't new. But I think there is something powerful about saying this is a moment where people are rethinking how they want to work. And the opportunity for managers here is to level up your leadership and to use this as a catalyst for good management. Because what you see in the research on leadership, and you look at people's upward feedback, there are some people like Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman who've written about this for HBR, and they've gone through a lot of deep data to look at patterns.

8:58And what you see is that the leaders who are best to get the best upward feedback who are kind of doing well who are performing well, in their managerial roles, are also those who are doing the things that address the issues with uh that people are raising with quiet quitting about does someone care about me are they going into conversations that show that they're actually paying attention to how I'm doing and what might be getting in the way of me doing better are they listening to my needs in thinking about how to set boundaries are they respecting my downtime are they understanding that that's actually important for performance?

9:36Are they actually giving me real recognition? I mean, we know that real wages are falling right now. This is me with my economist hat on. Real wages meaning the real things that we can buy with the money we're earning because inflation is outpacing wage growth. That's pretty significant. But what managers can do is be very deliberate about showing appreciation. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.

10:17Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

10:30Caroline Webb:Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweetgreen's fall harvest menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweetgreen featuring fall's best dressed. Make your move. Order on the Sweetgreen app. it's not money, but actually being very deliberate about giving specific appreciation. You did this and it was good because it had this effect and that's going to make it possible for these things to happen.

11:15Caroline Webb:A lot of managers don't give that kind of specific feedback. And what you see in the data is that when people do this, everything improves, not just quiet quitting, but everything. Well, before we get to the feedback, right, We have to identify if someone is quite quitting. So I'm asking on behalf of all managers out there, what are some of the signs that I know someone might be into this mindset? You know, I think actually anyone who's really paying attention to their teams knows when someone is quite quitting. But I think, you know, it is possible that, you know, if managers are very busy and stress themselves, maybe they're not paying close attention.

11:54So you want to look at whether someone looks like they're interested in the conversation if they are leaning forward and coming up with contributions now this is different from volunteering for extra stuff because I think there's a lot of office housework that gets done that actually you don't want to kind of think about well are they volunteering and stepping up for these extra things you want to look at the core role and you want to look at whether someone looks like they are interested and engaged and that you know you have to look someone's eyes you have to look at someone's face you have to look at their body language and uh you know pay attention to that and perhaps when we're busy we don't do so much of that well rebecca um i don't know where you're from rebecca feel free to tell us where you're from but rebecca asked to what extent is quiet quitting just resetting boundaries between work and non-work yeah i i'm i'm kind of with you rebecca actually um i mentioned before that one of the inspirations for me writing how to have a good day was because I saw at that point the level of engagement in the global workplace was actually 13 which is lower than it is now 21 so for years I've been talking about the importance of setting clear boundaries of finding balance of single tasking rather than multitasking because we know that this allows us to make fewer mistakes and get things done 30 more quickly.

13:21We know that even taking a brief break sharpens our mind and makes and helps us make better decisions. These things are measurable, and they relate to how our brains work. And this is good stuff that we should be doing anyway, both for ourselves, where we have the wiggle room to say, I'm just going to take a short break, or I'm just going to focus on this and close down this browser. So I'm single tasking, but also as managers to create an environment where it's okay, not to have your email responded to immediately and it's okay to suggest that people go for a break or not freak out when you notice that people are taking breaks so I do think that Rebecca's right that so much of this is about healthy renegotiation of boundaries that honestly have slid over the years as we've become more always on thanks to technology which has of course has you know been tremendously helpful but you know when you've got a constant stream of instant messages and there's an expectation you're always reachable we need to reset we do we do really need to reset but can quiet quitting go too far the other way if we're swinging the pendulum back and forth right so we have boundaries from employees they're establishing boundaries they should establish boundaries as managers maybe we should be responding to that can it swing too far the other way well tell me more about what you mean by that meaning can quiet quitting be uh and can you take it on so much that it'd be a negative space that you're in, that it's not producing the positive results that you want for yourself or your company.

14:50Yeah, I think, I think, yes. So if you imagine someone being really clear about expectations at work, you know, what. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero?

15:27This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

15:31Caroline Webb:Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweet Greens Fall Harvest Menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels, and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweetgreen, featuring fall's best dressed. Make your move, order on the Sweetgreen app. Having a conversation with their boss and saying, okay, I wanna be really clear what's in scope and what's not because I'm getting close to burnout and I really need to kind of think about how to make things all fit.

16:10I want to do a good job for you. But you know, I want to talk about how I'm organizing my work day and whether you know, there's a possibility to make it better. So that's a really good productive conversation to have. You can absolutely imagine someone being more what I don't take calls before 11am. And actually, you know, this is one of my general boundaries. I'm an I'm a late night person. So I'm not very good at early morning stuff. So over the years, I've had lots of conversations about saying I'd prefer to speak later if we can. That's different from saying I will not speak to you before 11 a.m.

16:46And so I think there is this sort of tone of honest, clear conversation and negotiation versus this is my line in the sand. And this is there's no space for negotiation. And I think that is where you start to get to a place where even the positive version of quiet quitting becomes hard to manage. Because as a manager and as a leader in an organization, you're trying to juggle so many people, so many concerns. And so you're always finding compromises. You can't please everybody all the time. So it requires some flexibility from everybody, I think. Those are some key words, compromising, flexibility, maybe even some grace there.

17:24Oh, grace, yes. Angela asked a good question. She ties us to work from home or wonders if we should. Do you think working from home and the increase in working from home positions has actually impacted the quiet quitting movement? Well, I think when we look at what might have brought quiet quitting into the spotlight right now, there are a few things. I mentioned real wages declining earlier on. Stress levels as reported by Gallup survey have ticked up. I do think that the push to go back to the office, which a lot of companies are now instituting, has definitely made a lot of people think, well, hold on, I've got my working from home routine.

18:08Now, with my family, how am I going to make it work? And I think that is definitely one part of the story that is driving discussions right now. I think working from home, and I've been working from home for a you know quite a long time i go to clients uh locations on occasion when my home base is is you know my main location and it takes management itself because yes you don't have the commute you don't have um some of the challenges of you know taking yourself into an office and having to pay for lunch and and so on but you do have to then be very clear actually with yourself about boundaries and breaks because i think when you're sitting on your own it's actually sometimes harder to remember to get up and you know do something different and to kind of you know give yourself a shake and go for a walk um so i i think that you know these are issues for everybody whether they're in an office or whether they're working from home well that makes me think about managers do we get the option to quiet quit i think that everybody knows a manager who has quite good.

19:16I mean, you know, I think back over my life. Yes, I mean, there's no managers are not different managers that you know, we may be future managers, managers were once, you know, employees, managers have managers, you know, there isn't really this sort of sense of managers are magically different. And I think, you know, in a way, that's what could come out of really good quality conversations where you've got people opening up on both sides, you know, whether they're the boss or the direct report to say, okay, things are challenging right now. Everyone's tired. We know we need to look after our mental health and our sense of balance and sustainability.

20:00What is that? When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

20:31Caroline Webb:Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweet Greens Fall Harvest Menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels, and crave-worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweetgreen, featuring fall's best dressed. Make your move. Order on the Sweetgreen app. That we can do as a team, that would help us all. And it can be very, very powerful, I found, when a manager opens up to their team and says, here's what I'm wrestling with.

21:11Here's what I'm trying to optimize for. Because then you get a much better quality conversation because you realize, oh, actually, you know, we're all in this together. Yeah, yeah, I like that. And one person asked about managers, how do you know who to give your time and feedback to? So basically, Christine is asking, if someone is quite quitting, are they even worth your time? Oh, well, that's an interesting question. So even the best bosses will have some people in their teams who are not engaged. And I think, you know, there's a lot that you can do as a great manager. All things I mentioned before about appreciation, about clear conversations, about caring conversations.

21:55But even the best managers in Zenger and Folkman's research that was published in HBR found that the best managers had 3 % of people who were effectively quite quitting. So there was always going to be some people. The question is, how do you engage with them and engage with the team so that it doesn't spread? And, you know, that has to be that has to be just having the conversations, whether you feel like it or not. and I do think also that the truth is that if someone is quite quitting you know they are not learning at that point they are not leaning in and learning things that would be interesting to them as they're looking for the next job and that's not great for them but the other thing that's not great for them if they're quite quitting is that you know sometimes times you have to make budget cuts.

22:50And there's a phenomenon called quiet firing, which some people might have heard of, which is that managers might look at the team and think, oh, so-and-so is less engaged right now. Okay, well, if I have to make budget cuts next year, well, I guess that's, you know, that's somewhere I'm going to look. So, you know, that's a tough reality, which is not really part of the TikTok videos. But the truth is that, you know, this is a two-sided conversation. Yeah, I'm glad you kind of brought it up 30 ,000 feet so we can just get a look at this, what that means. But let me ask you this. Is there a cure for quiet quitting?

23:28So we talked about the signs and we talked about being proactive and having these open conversations. Is there really a cure? I think so. Yes. I have seen over the course of, I mean, I've been, you know, at work for 30 years, and I've been focusing on how to help people thrive in their professional lives for over 20 of those. And I have so often seen someone who was supposedly a lost cause, both actually as a boss or as someone reporting to you or as a peer, you just think, oh, they're just completely checked out. and so many times I've seen that magical moment that comes from someone actually bothering to have the right conversation with them asking them what they think asking them how they're doing asking them what's going well what's not going well what would help um and you know I've seen so often how you know even you know sometimes it happens at quite senior level I've seen it with a CFO uh I've seen it with managers you know frontline managers where you just think oh they're just you know that's that's it they're checked out they're really annoying they're really resistant and they you know they say no to everything and one conversation can unlock it so yes i do think there's a cure but you do have to sit with the person ask real questions be prepared to listen get curious and ask the follow-up questions and say tell me more about why you say that tell me more about that and what do you think we can do so you get solution focused at the end yeah that actually leans into deanna from colorado springs because she asked what are some key questions managers can ask.

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26:06So clear expectations about what does good look like? You know, if I were doing really well at this job, what would you see? Because then you can focus on what really matters. the manager knows that you're interested in what really matters and that can be the beginning of a very productive conversation and then I do think talking about how you do your best work and framing the discussion about boundaries and personal preferences in the context of performance so for example I mentioned earlier on I'm a late night person so when I'm having the conversation about timings of meetings I don't say can we move the 8am meeting to 11am I say I see the meetings at 8am i'll be honest i'm a late night person so you will get better work out of me better contribution if we were able to speak later in the day is there a chance of moving it later i'm of course going to stay later at the other end of the day that's a different conversation and i think setting it in the context of this is going to get better performance out of me is always going to be a better foundation for having conversation with your manager it's interesting because quiet quitting just seems to be something that almost everyone has an opinion on there are a few things they get that status it's politics right maybe matters of the heart and love and then there's quiet quitting why do you think everyone has an opinion about quiet quitting i think work is just so central to our lives whether it's paid or unpaid work whether it's work within the home community it's if you i mean just mathematically if you just think about the hours that you spend say if you have a classic full-time job that's half our waking hours during the week it's very hard for that not to then feed into how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about our lives and there's this beautiful quote that I love and you know wheel out at any opportunity thank you for giving me the chance to say it which is how we spend our days is how we spend our lives which is from the writer Annie Dillard and that just really stuck in my mind I put it at the front of my book and I say it a lot when I'm giving talks because you know so often we think well you know there'll be another day there'll be another day this is it this is our life and each day matters and each day is in our gift to do what we can to make a little better for ourselves and for others and you know work is just so central to to all of that and how we feel about our days so I think it's good that we are having the conversation about what is our psychological relationship with work because it's uh it's really central to who we are as human beings yeah well we're both working right now aren't we yes but we're having a good time so you sparked some conversation there with uh quiet firing so people are discussing what that means and uh could you just explain a little bit more about the concept a bit?

29:04Yeah, well, quiet firing is a bit like quiet quitting in that it's not necessarily the most functional way to respond to a situation, but nonetheless, you know, in reality it's part of the working environment. I mean, at the one end, it is not paying so much attention to someone who seems to be checking out. That's not so outrageous, I suppose. At the other end of the spectrum is doing something terrible, which is, you know, trying to make it so unpleasant for the individual that they choose to leave at their own accord, which is awful. And then there's sort of middle ground, I would say, which is what I mentioned earlier on that, you know, you might notice that someone is not that engaged, not that excited, not really contributing.

29:55And you might just make a little note to yourself and think, okay, well, that's where the buffer is if I have to make cuts. And that is also quite, you know, quite a dark thing to say. And yet, you know, with, you know, when I talk to leaders and managers, they're always conscious of who is most engaged and who is not. And obviously, the advice to managers who are doing this quiet firing is exactly the same as to employees who are doing quite quitting, which is have the conversation, don't be passive about it there is a conversation to be had about boundaries and expectations and just taking a moment to say tell me what would make you feel most excited about your work or if that feels too soft to say I noticed that you were frowning in the last meeting and I was curious to understand what you were thinking about this or you might say let's talk about how things going how are you feeling about work and uh what would make that better there are any number of different versions of this but the key thing is having the conversation rather than just sitting back and saying okay well there are lost calls well it's interesting because when we talk about having the conversation uh those questions really sound like a one-on-one conversation with your employee you're a dee uh ask how can managers have open conversations about quiet quitting i mean i'm even curious about that question if open conversations means get everyone in a room and let's talk about this phenomenon and not ignore the elephant in the room or if it means one-on-one do you think there's a an opportunity to even just discuss it openly with your team i think it takes more skill to do this in a team setting because you're managing the dynamics in the room i absolutely can imagine a manager doing this well by saying, okay, you know, everything is perhaps a little feeling a little harder right now.

31:51Let's go around the room and hear like one thing that's going well, one thing that's really tough, and one way that you would like to have more support from everybody in the team, including me, right? That's a conversation you can have in a team that is a very powerful one. And that brings the discussion into the open about what would make things better. And then, you know, you might see that there's common themes and you might be able to then as a team say actually wouldn't it be great if we had a little bit of a language for saying i need to take a break and i'm coming off slack you know maybe it's i'm going to do some deeper thinking for half an hour back at 4 pm you know and having those conversations as a team for example about you know body clocks and preferences you know that can be really powerful it's obviously the best thing to do if you can have this conversation as a team because once those norms are in place you can all reinforce each other but it takes some skill do you think quiet quitting is about relationship building on the manager's part uh towards the employee yes absolutely absolutely it is yes i mean and you can think of this as the responsibility of managers you know uh is it yeah you've got these people you know who are working for you and it's a tremendous privilege and responsibility to have people's effectively their people's working lives in your hands but i would also say it's the joy of management is exactly that that feeling that you've got these people and you can make such a difference to their lives now that's for me i remember when i became a manager when i was a at mckinsey i just remember feeling like oh my god this is the best job in the world I can really make a difference here.

33:35You know, I can choose the way that the team works. I can, I can shape the culture. It was a sort of wonderful sense of, oh, oh, now I can pull all these levers to help get the best out of people. So, you know, I think it is the responsibility, but it also is the pleasure of management. And I think sometimes that can get a bit lost. Yeah, I like that. I like that framing the pleasure of management. And it helps you have a good day and speaking of how to have a good day you want to tell us about it I'm curious thank you you very kindly suggested I might you know show it here there we go there we go can we read the book and it did were you did you have some vision that might help with quiet quitting today it was a manifest basically I wrote the book as a little bit of a manifesto for rethinking about your work because there's so much evidence from behavioral science by which I mean neuroscience, psychology, behavioral economics on what it takes for the human brain to perform at its best.

34:34But a lot of that doesn't feed its way into how we work as individuals, how we run our teams, how we run our organizations. And there are some small principles which we've touched on today, which are very grounded in science, like taking a small break. What does that do? It helps us take better decisions because the deliberate system in our brain actually requires breaks in order to perform well. And deliberate system is responsible for reasoning, self-control and planning. There's a gazillion, in fact, I would say 100 tips in my book about specifically what does the science tell us about how to be at our best more often.