Employees Stop Going Above And Beyond At Work And Join The "Quiet Quitting" Trend, Here's What People Have To Say About It (30 Answers)

To find out what an expert has to say about quiet quitting, Bored Panda reached out to Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of the hybrid work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, and best-selling author of Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage (Intentional Insights, 2021).

Dr. Tsipursky explained that the term “quiet quitting” emerged in March 2022, and refers to doing the bare minimal tasks of your job description well enough that you don’t get fired.

“The concept quickly went viral on TikTok. Yet it only started to gain traction as an issue of concern among business leaders when government data on productivity released in August 2022 showed a sharp and unexpected drop in Q1 and Q2 of 2022,” he said.

Moreover, “soon after that worrisome datapoint in August, Gallup released a survey in early September indicating that as many as half of all Americans may be quiet quitters, further exacerbating business leadership concerns about this problem.”

So what explains the drop in productivity associated with quiet quitting? Dr. Tsipursky quotes Ben Wigert, director of research and strategy for workplace management at Gallup, who argues that “forcing employees to come to the office under the threat of discipline leads to disengagement, fear, and distrust.”

Dr. Tsipursky continued: “Indeed, Gallup found that if people are required to come to the office for more time than they prefer, ‘employees experience significantly lower engagement, significantly lower well-being, significantly higher intent to leave [and] significantly higher levels of burnout.’”

By contrast, employees feel gratitude to companies that give them more flexibility and show trust, Dr. Tsipursky argues. “As one such employee said, ‘if my company is going to come in and give me this flexibility, then I’m going to be the first to give them 100%.’ Indeed, research by Stanford University even before the pandemic found that workers who spent 4 days a week working remotely were 9% more engaged than in-office staff. Gallup finds that ‘the optimal engagement boost occurs when employees spend 60% to 80% of their time—or three to four days in a five-day workweek—working off-site.’”

Moreover, the Integrated Benefits Institute found in an October 2022 survey that employees who work remotely or in a hybrid environment reported being more satisfied (20.7%) and more highly engaged (50.8%).

Dr. Tsipursky also mentioned this June 2022 Citrix survey which found that 56% of fully remote workers feel engaged, but only 51% of in-office employees do so. “The evidence is backed up by a CNBC survey from June 2022, which found that 52% of fully remote workers say they are very satisfied with their jobs, compared with 47% of workers working full-time in the office.”

When Dr. Tsipursky shows this data to his consulting clients, they often ask him what they can do to address this problem. “First of all, I remind them of a joke from the famous comedian Henny Youngman: ‘The patient says, ‘Doctor, it hurts when I do this.’ The doctor says, ‘Then don't do that!’’’

According to him, the best approach for the future of work is a flexible team-led approach, where team leads make the call on work arrangements that serve the needs of their team. “Team leads know best what their teams need, including how to maximize productivity, engagement, and collaboration.”

hen asked what are the main signs of "quiet quitting," Dr. Tsipursky mentioned decreased productivity and engagement. “That means employees just doing the bare minimum, and not putting in extra work even when the company or their team needs them to do so, as well as not socially engaging with their colleagues outside of work hours,” he explained.

According to Dr. Tsipursky, it’s valuable to help staff address burnout as part of the return to office, such as by providing mental health benefits. “Burnout contributes to quiet quitting, and we see a clear increase in burnout during the drive to return employees to the office.”