Shaka Insights

3 Proactive Steps to Fight Quiet Quitting

Written By Melanie Wertzberger

Proactive vs. Reactive Human Resources
Unfortunately, for the past 3 years HR Teams have been required to play defense not offense. Which is not at all the fault of the talented professionals in this space. There has been a constant stream of major unexpected events across the globe that has led to endless reactive work rather than proactive planning. A pandemic hits, react. Layoffs happen, react. Major racism protests occur, react. Political tensions rise through a heated presidential election, react. A war breaks out in Ukraine, react.
Today, I finally see HR teams coming up for air, looking at the future and strategically building a long term plan for their employee population. What does the new normal look like and what are the new challenges we will be battling in engaging our employees?
What is Silent Quitting?
One topic has come to the forefront of the media: silent quitting. Silent quitting (also called quiet quitting) is the idea that employees have started to do the absolute bare minimum work to maintain their employment and nothing more. For the rest of the day, they silently do nothing work related and get on with their own personal life. I have heard people say they simply move their mouse every 10 minutes just to keep their slack status circle green, so their manager believes that they are online and being productive.
Three Proactive Steps to Fight Silent Quitting
  • Give employees a personal success to work towards - Having a clear career progression for an employee can create a night and day difference in their willingness to go the extra mile. Today, employees are less motivated simply because they want their company to succeed and now are more motivated to work towards their own financial success and freedom. Promotions and raises can become smaller and more frequient to reward high-achievers and prevent quiet quitting.
  • Help employees make friends at work - Having work friends checking in makes it harder to be unproductive. Studies have shown that having a close friend at work increases productivity and engagement. Our platform, Shaka was built to help HR teams easily launch programs to help employees feel more connection, camaraderie and friendship at work.
  • If you are not already, start having conversations about how much employee monitoring and activity tracking your leadership feels is appropriate to balance employee trust with productivity.
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