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Quiet quitting became a thing last year—then went viral on social media—when employees put their foot down and decided they wouldn’t go above and beyond for their jobs anymore. It’s been among the many trends reshaping the workplace following the pandemic-triggered Great Resignation and the widespread adoption of working from home, which gave employees a newfound flexibility. But do these workers know how big a blow they landed to the world economy?
Quiet quitting has a cost and it’s big. The global economy is losing almost $9 trillion, according to analytics firm Gallup, equivalent to as much as 9% of the world’s GDP. While that may look like a hefty price tag, it’s good news in a way, the polling firm argues. “Quiet quitters are often your greatest opportunity for growth and change,” Gallup wrote in its report on the phenomenon published Wednesday.
In other words, quiet quitting is rampant among employees, but managers could make something meaningful out of it.
“Although they are minimally productive, they are more likely to be stressed and burnt out than engaged workers because they feel lost and disconnected from their workplace,” Gallup wrote of quiet quitters, who now account for 59% of the workers globally, in its report.
There may be many factors driving quiet quitting. With layoffs roiling the jobs market, one industry at a time, morale and engagement among employees have taken a hit even among employees who kept their jobs as they grapple with higher stress levels at work. Economic woes may be compounding the quiet quitting crisis with high inflation and recessionary fears at the top of people’s minds. Or maybe the quiet quitters are just responding to the changing workplace dynamics, suggests Rubab Jafry O’Connor, service professor of management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.
“Perhaps our work-from-anywhere, accessible at all times technological world puts us in a stressful space where the boundaries have blurred so much as to be indistinguishable,” O’Connor told Fortune. “Perhaps quiet quitting in organizations is a response to that stress. Could that be an effort to reestablish those boundaries?”
There’s even more to the subject beyond the nearly $9 trillion figure. Did you know that there are three kinds of employees in your workplace? Gallup’s findings may surprise you.
Don’t be a loud quitter
The Gallup survey categorizes employees in three ways based on their level of engagement: the ones “thriving at work” are most engaged, the quiet quitters are not engaged, and the “loud quitters” are actively disengaged which involves taking steps to hurt the organization they work for. The issue of low engagement comes with cost, but it’s also mostly fixable if managers try hard enough, especially in the case of quiet quitters, according to Gallup.
“They are waiting for a leader or a manager to have a conversation with them, encourage them, inspire them. A few changes to how they are managed could turn them into productive team members,” Gallup wrote. “Quiet quitting employees are your organization’s low-hanging fruit for productivity gains.”
The survey found that most employees want better culture at their companies to improve the quiet quitting problem, whether that’s by being able to approach managers more easily or by being given more challenging work. And Gallup finds that the solution to these roadblocks lies in the hands of managers and leaders.
“Seventy percent of team engagement is attributable to the manager. But many or most of your managers are quiet quitting too,” Gallup wrote. “They are waiting for the tools to build great teams.”
Top leaders have highlighted how quiet quitting is an issue for managers to solve. A panel of human resource experts at the World Economic Forum earlier this year discussed how top-down leaders must communicate and build connections with their employees to help them feel more motivated.
“If the leaders and organizations are listening to their employees and addressing the underlying concerns of their employees, then this should have a positive impact,” O’Connor said, adding that in contrast, if organizations saw employees as “acting antagonistically,” it could hurt morale.
Experts have also observed changes in how employees are in their workplace. Economics professor Tyler Cowen argued in an op-ed last week that there is a “serious crisis of morale” in the new post-pandemic office setting, and that perhaps workers are doing less as a result. He also added that remote work could be having a negative impact on the workplace and likely requires more research before we can conclude its effects on employee productivity.
Several studies in the past have shown that remote work helps employee productivity more generally, but among American workers, productivity has been on the decline. Employees, especially among the younger generations, are increasingly valuing work-life balance and treating it as an important factor in their jobs.
With the labor force reevaluating their priorities while braving the twin storms of layoffs and an economic downturn, suffice to say that quiet quitting may linger around longer than people thought.
“Quiet quitting is a reaction and a move away, intentionally, from the hustle culture of the past and towards a culture that’s more around setting boundaries around work/life balance,” Lexi Clarke, compensation software Payscale’s vice president of people, told Fortune in February. “I don’t think quiet quitting is going away in 2023, especially if we’re in a recessionary environment that causes more layoffs.”
