You’ve probably heard about “quiet quitting.” In essence, quiet quitting doesn’t mean actually quitting a job, but instead working only hard enough to meet basic requirements. By quiet quitting, you’re choosing not to care so much about doing the absolute most; you’re choosing not to make work the core pillar of your identity.
Many companies and leaders are very worried about this mindset, going so far as to say that it’s ruining the economy. Of course, you have a right to worry about quiet quitting as a manager: it may feel unsettling that your direct reports might approach their responsibilities differently than they did before.
But I have a couple of different takes. First of all, I view quiet quitting as an important cultural conversation about establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries. Particularly in the era of remote work, it’s become more and more difficult to maintain boundaries between work and life. But boundaries are crucial for avoiding burnout, and they allow us to create new definitions of success in multiple areas of our lives.
Maybe our job title and standing at work don’t have to be the all-consuming area that determines whether we’re “successful” or not; maybe we can be successful friends and family members, successful in our mindfulness and spirituality, successful in our personal hobbies, or a wide range of other disciplines. The concept of quiet quitting forces us to reckon with the weight we ascribe to work, and challenges us to consider how we’d fill the rest of our lives if we did put work on autopilot.
From a slightly different (and more operational) perspective, I view the quiet quitting concept as an important test for companies’ performance management philosophies and processes. Many companies assess performance on the basis of “expectations” - do employees meet expectations, exceed expectations, etc. But it’s very easy, and very common, to begin viewing above-and-beyond work as a baseline expectation. In fact, that’s the exact trend that led us to quiet quitting in the first place; we wouldn’t need quiet quitting if basic adherence to job responsibilities was actually the baseline expectation.
Through that lens, reflect on your performance management system - whether as an individual manager for your team, or as the executive heading up this process at your company. Are you appropriately benchmarking your true expectations for performance? Or are you creating a culture where above-and-beyond is actually required all the time, even if you’re pretending it’s not? (Guess what: that’s a culture that is at high risk of mass burnout.)
For all of these reasons, I celebrate quiet quitting - not just because it’s a liberating movement that makes us all healthier, but also because it can spark a host of important moments for reflection, whether for you personally or for your team. If you really want to grab the bull by the horns, make quiet quitting the topic of an upcoming team meeting or all-hands: it’s a great opportunity to have meaningful dialogue with your team.