Picture this: your employee is on vacation. Before taking their time off, they submitted all the tasks assigned. But, the manager reviewed their work after they left and drops them messages after messages. Two cases would happen:
When employees choose the latter approach, they quiet quit their work.
However, numerous misconceptions are floating about the term.
Let’s understand what exactly quiet quitting is and what you as a tech company need to know about it.
Employers’ and recruiters’ perspectives on quiet quitting: employees quitting their job or being lazy. It’s neither.
When employees quiet quit their job, they do exactly what their job description says. They don’t choose to overwork, cling on to after-work calls, and shut their emails once they head home.
In other words, quiet quitting is all about maintaining healthy boundaries and creating a work-life balance.
Because quiet quitting focuses on creating a healthy work-life balance, employees practicing it usually:
Also, read: 7 Ways To Reduce Burnout In Your Tech Teams
Tech companies have been changing their approach to creating a healthy work environment for their employees ever since the companies transitioned to on-premises. Why?
Working remotely helped employees create healthy boundaries that have been disturbed after their return to the office.
For those interested, here’s an insightful thread on what quiet quitting means for people working in different sectors.
So what can you do to make sure your employees are engaged and minimize quiet quitting?
Companies have already started transitioning to a 4-days work week model. Employees in these organizations work for four days and have the remaining days off. This gives them ample time to rejuvenate. Does this mean they‘ll need to work extra hours on the 4 working days? Not at all.
A great example: MyCheckins, a Bangalore-based SaaS company functions Monday to Thursday for 32 hours.
Are the employees disinterested in working with your team? Instead of pushing them to give quality output, get them to work with another tech team in your department for a few days. If they feel engaged working with the other team, help them make the switch to the other team.
Running regular employee pulse surveys is a great way to keep a tab on what’s happening on the ground level. By reviewing the survey, you can find the loopholes and work on improving the reasons for disengagement.
Many times, employees work hard only to feel unappreciated. When they put in extra effort, they expect two things from their managers—to be appreciated or rewarded with a pay rise.
When neither happens, they pull themselves off from the overwork they had been doing. To tackle these situations, managers must learn to appreciate their team members more and reward them whenever relevant.
For example, when a team member does incredible work on a project, send them a thank you note or celebrate their efforts in front of fellow team members.
Also, read: 7 Employee Engagement Strategies For WFH Tech Teams
In the context of technology companies, where the phenomenon of quiet quitting has been prevalent, specific positive effects can be observed. Quiet quitting often results in less immediate disruption to ongoing projects and workflows. Teams can continue their work without the abrupt departure of key personnel. Employees who quietly quit may stay on for an extended period during their transition, allowing for the transfer of critical knowledge and skills to team members, ensuring continuity in project execution.
For employees, quiet quitting provides time to reevaluate their career paths within the tech industry. They can explore new opportunities while still fulfilling their current roles, leading to a more informed career shift.
While there are positives, quiet quitting often leads to a reduction in employee productivity, as workers only perform the bare minimum required by their job roles. In tech companies, this can slow down project timelines and innovation cycles.
When some employees engage in quiet quitting, it can negatively affect the morale of their colleagues who may feel overburdened or demotivated by the lack of shared effort and enthusiasm. In the tech industry, where precision and innovation are key, quiet quitting may lead to a decline in the quality of work. This could manifest in more bugs in software or less creative solutions to technical problems.
What’s even more important to understand is that quiet quitting is often a precursor to actual quitting. Tech companies might face higher turnover rates, leading to the loss of skilled employees and increased costs in hiring and training new staff. One of the biggest assets in tech is innovative thinking. Quiet quitting can lead to a stagnation in creative ideas and initiatives, which are crucial for a tech company’s growth and adaptation to market changes.
The ripple effect of reduced productivity and quality can potentially reach customers, leading to dissatisfaction with the products or services, which is particularly detrimental in the competitive tech industry. Managers may find themselves spending more time micromanaging or addressing the consequences of quiet quitting, instead of focusing on strategic planning and fostering a positive work environment.
As a company, HackerEarth has a healthy employee-first perspective on things. If employees are indulging in producing lesser output than what their job says (instead of creating healthy boundaries!), relook into the few ways we shared above to create a meaningful and healthy work environment.
On our latest episode of This Is Recruiting, we spoke at great length with Crystal Lay, CEO of GBS Worldwide about what talent teams can learn from the Quiet Quitting trend to improve employer branding and workplace culture. Watch the full episode here!
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