Raise your hand if you’re over the term “Quiet Quitting” and wish everyone could just stop talking (read: debating) about it already. 

Well, hate to break it to ya, but the practice of quiet quitting is here to stay for now. So here are a few things that managers need to shift their focus on, so that they know how to respond and act moving forward.

As much as our Real You Leadership team hates the term, too, we see Quiet Quitting has been a gift in starting a critical conversation. It’s allowed many of us to pause, reflect, debate, and call for change in the role of work and what a professional life can look like.

This is a movement and it isn’t about your employees being “lazy”, “ungrateful”, or “not cut out for the workplace”. Quiet Quitting means your team members are doing their job 100%, nothing more and nothing less. They’re no longer concerned with going above and beyond without additional compensation for companies that are “quiet firing” (re: not giving raises, promotions, or a clear path to advancement) them year after year. 

It’s about your team members being human beings (just like you) who rather live fuller, expansive lives that don’t center around overproducing, overwhelming, and over-giving at work. The workforce today is aware of the fact that they have other options, and they’re not afraid to get caught in…. doing their job.

So leaders, let’s keep it real: Recognize your part in potentially running off great talent. Stop expecting your employees to go above and beyond their job description and overproduce what you’re not willing to pay them for the additional labor or aren’t providing a clear path to career growth. 

It’s time to have open conversations with your people about what you can do better, and partner together on what it could look like to normalize healthy boundaries, equitable workloads, and wellness at work.

Here are a few ways that leadership at your company can help quiet quitters still stay engaged, find meaning and purpose in their roles, and dare we say, even thrive:

Up your Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) game

Focus on Equity & Inclusion actions and policies that are centered around the most historically marginalized and excluded people. This includes Black, Indigenous, People of Color (POC), women and femmes, the LGBTQIA+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent and neurodiverse people, veterans, among many more intersectional communities and identities.

Here are some questions for you to consider:

• Are you properly compensating each team member?

• Are you giving equal pay for equal work?

• How many Black, Indigenous, and people of color are in leadership outside of DEI roles?

• Are you giving clear and actionable advice and feedback for people of color and other minority power employees to advance into leadership roles, promotions, and higher pay levels?

Real You Leadership always highlights the $400,000 to $1 million pay gap women of color face in the span of a 40-year career, and pay discrepancies are one of the biggest reasons for WOC to quiet quit or straight up leave their current employers. 

More questions for you to ponder on:

• Are you asking or expecting (whether implicitly or explicitly) employees to do work outside of their job descriptions? 

• Are you asking or expecting (whether implicitly or explicitly) employees to do work beyond their set work hours and set 40 hours per week?

Your team members are aware of when the line between being asked to go above and beyond and being taken advantage of is crossed. We’re seeing a lot of employers telling their employees “to deal with it because we’re short staffed” or gaslighting them into “being more of a team player” -- doing anything along these lines is a big reason employers lose the trust, motivation and best efforts from their employees.

Last round of Qs:

• How are your C-suite and managers taking a stand against racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and hate in and out of the workplace?

• How are you making sure every single person, including those in minority power, feels safe, heard, and valued? 

It’s becoming more critical than ever for managers and leaders of all businesses and organizations to nurture an equitable and inclusive, psychologically safe, and engaging culture, to retain their top talent. Weak and half-baked DEI initiatives and plans don’t cut it anymore, and professionals can smell when you’re being more performative in your efforts and allyship from 100 miles away. 

Support their wellness

Much of the discussion around quiet quitting centers on the mental, emotional and physical wellness of your employees. 

Be honest:

• Are you, your managers, or the work itself causing harm to your employee’s wellness?

• Are you normalizing taking breaks, setting boundaries with workloads, and taking time off?

• Are you expecting each employee to have the same productivity, energy, and focus levels?

• Are you expecting every employee to have the same schedule and flexibility? (example a single employee straight out of college vs. a working mother of two young children in school vs. a seasoned professional who is neurodivergent with ADHD and has chronic pain?)

• How do you connect and communicate with your employees that you have their best interests at heart? How do you align your actions with your best interest?

Look into ways your leaders can deepen their commitment to employees’ well-being and further establish wellness practices, so that your team members can be fully themselves, healthily handle natural stress and anxiety, and connect with their full potential while working with you.

At Real You Leadership we’ve done this through providing a learning and development stipend, starting half-day Fridays earlier this year, starting a #wellness chat channel to check in on each other and share our practices, allowing team members to create a schedule that works for them, and encouraging breaks, especially on the tough days with hard news reports and personal challenges amongst other things. 

This year we’ve seen many of our corporate partners do much of the same, including investing in therapy, coaching, and mindfulness workshops and trainings for their teams, as well as having a whole wellness week off.

Aside from building these into your systems, you can practice today by consistently checking in on your team and asking them how they’re really doing, about life updates, and not just centering each interaction around work. As humans, we all yearn to be seen, supported, and understood, and it’s crucial that your managers are trained on how to provide that for themselves and others.

Listen to your team members and co-create the path forward

Quiet quitting doesn’t just come out of nowhere and happens completely silently. Chances are, your employees who are doing this have tried to express their needs, challenges, and worries to you or through the proper feedback channels (1-on-1 meetings, your performance review, or in anonymous employment satisfaction surveys, etc).

This often happens when leadership fails to acknowledge, adjust, or correct the concerns, or if they outright ignore them and drop the ball. If your team doesn’t feel supported or heard in any way, chances are they’ll feel devalued, lose trust and belief in their leaders’ ability to change things for the better.

We’ve had a lot of our partners ask us what to do to prevent quiet quitting or stop it from happening, and the answer is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It depends on the company, the current policies and systems in place, and the individual and the manager-to-employee-to team dynamic.

Nuance is everything here, but the important thing is to start. Start talking to your people and listen to understand. Validate their feelings and experiences, even if you don’t completely agree or you had better intentions than the harmful impact that they might describe. This practice can be so hard for managers to do if they’re not properly trained to give and receive quality feedback, we see it all the time. Offer more management training if you need to, but the point is to get all your leaders talking to each team member as soon as possible.

You should be having these types of check-ins and open conversations regularly, but we suggest having a “Stay Interview”. This concept is the same as an “exit interview” except you’re not collecting critical feedback about the employee’s experience when they’re already out the door and it’s too late to implement changes that would have helped them happily stay. 

In these open conversations, you can ask open-ended questions like:

• What can management do better?

• What can growth outside of a linear promotion look like for you?

• What are some ways we can recalibrate your workload?

• How else can we support you in having a better work-life balance?

• How can we honor your boundaries and needs and still hit our goals?

• What would it take for you to stay and be fulfilled here?

Know that this is a learning experience, and normalize that these conversations aren’t easy and can be super awkward. You might not know the right path forward then and there, but by sharing and learning each other’s perspectives you can start mapping it out and co-creating the next steps together.

As a leader it’s important to know that these types of human-centered conversations are meaningful for employees to have, and it’s more empowering and impactful if you take one for the team and start them versus expecting them. This act alone can prevent quiet quitting or bring a huge sense of safety, trust and empathy back into your work relationships.

It takes a lot of courage, vulnerability and curiosity, but you got this. Start practicing these courageous, open talks regularly and you’ll see your progress and growth as a leader.

Having good intentions in giving feedback sounds good in theory, but what really matters is the impact it has on your employees.

Actionable advice and critical feedback directly impacts the careers of BIPOC professionals, they absolutely need it. Our “Navigating the Feedback Loop for Performance Reviews” workshop is essential for elevating BIPOC and women professionals in your company.

Leadership & Negotiation Coach for Women of Color in Technology|Founder|Workshop Facilitator, Speaker & Trainer

Nadia’s career and leadership expertise has been featured in CNBC, HuffPost, FastCompany, New York Times Kids, and The Muse.

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