Quiet Quitting

Quiet quitting: a definition

Quiet quitting (الاستقالة الصامتة) describes the situation of an employee who does what is required of them within the limits of their declared role and does no more, after a period in which they used to put in extra effort. The employee goes on doing the work that the role sets out. What has stopped is the effort they used to give beyond it. The description rests on a change over time: it compares what the employee gives now with what the same employee used to give.

Why the name quiet quitting is misleading, and why it has more than one meaning

Quiet quitting is not a resignation. The employee remains in the job, so the word “quitting” in the name does not describe anything the employee has done. It does not necessarily mean a shortfall either, because performance within the limits of the declared role remains performance of what is required. An employee who does everything the role asks has met the role, even when they no longer do more than it asks.

For that reason a distinction has to be drawn between two situations that the single name brings together, although they differ from each other:

• Withdrawal from extra effort, while performance stays within what is required. It is a matter of unstated expectations, not a matter of performance. What the employee has stopped giving was never set out as part of the role, so its absence cannot be measured against the role. An expectation that the effort would continue may have existed, but nobody declared it.
• A decline in performance itself, below the required level. It is a performance case, and it is addressed through its own administrative path, which includes a performance improvement plan. In this situation the shortfall is measured against what the role requires, so the role supplies the standard against which the employee is judged.

Confusing the two can lead to the wrong response, and the error can run either way. One error is to call to account an employee who is meeting their obligations, handling a matter of unstated expectations with the tools that exist for performance. The other is to overlook a real decline by regarding it as a “phenomenon”, as though a fall below the required level were part of a general trend, so that the administrative path that exists for it goes unused.

What withdrawal from extra effort reveals about quiet quitting

When quiet quitting takes the form of withdrawal from extra effort, the first of the two situations above, it can reveal two things about the effort that has been withdrawn. The first is that the effort was undocumented and nothing was given in return for it: it was not written into the role, and it brought the employee no corresponding reward. The second is that the work had come to depend on it. Once an effort that nobody recorded is withdrawn and the work feels the difference, that difference shows the work was relying on something the role did not include.

Three questions can open up the cause behind those two findings:

• Was the extra effort visible and counted in the appraisal, or was it assumed? If it was assumed, the employee was giving something that the appraisal did not count, and the organisation was relying on that effort without having recorded it anywhere.
• Has something changed recently, such as a new manager, a promotion that went to someone else, or a promise that was not kept? It looks at what is close in time: a change that came shortly before the employee stopped giving more than the role requires.
• Has the role itself widened without any change to its title or its pay? In that case the role now asks for more than it did when it was defined, while what it is called and what it pays have stayed where they were.

Responses that do not address quiet quitting

Responses such as a staff event, a motivational message or a call for more initiative do not touch the cause of withdrawal from extra effort. In that situation the employee has not lost the ability to give more. They have readjusted what they give, setting it at what the declared role requires. The capacity is still there, and what has changed is the amount the employee has decided to give. An event, a message or a call for initiative leaves unchanged the terms on which that decision was made.

What changes the decision is a change to the underlying exchange itself, and it can take one of three forms:

• Clarity about what counts. It means making known which effort is recorded and taken into account, so that extra effort no longer rests on an assumption that nobody has stated. The employee then knows in advance whether a given piece of extra effort will be seen in the appraisal, instead of finding out afterwards.
• Formally widening the role, with a matching return. It means that, where the role has in fact grown, the growth is written into the role and matched by what the role gives in return, instead of being left as an expectation that the employee is assumed to meet.
• Addressing what brought trust to an end. It means responding to the cause of the lost trust itself, not only to the change in effort that the employee has made in response to it.

How quiet quitting differs from employee engagement

Employee engagement is a concept that measures an employee’s connection to their work along a continuous scale. Quiet quitting is a description of one particular behaviour at one end of that scale. The first is a measure, and the second is an observation. A measure answers where an employee stands on that scale, while an observation answers what an employee has been seen to do.

An observation records what has been seen in particular cases. Basing an administrative decision on the observation alone, without measurement, can lead to a generalisation that does not hold up, because what was seen in the cases observed is then extended to others without anything to show whether it applies to them.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.