“Quiet Quitting” Is a Long-standing Phenomenon That Companies Must Address Urgently.
Analyzed over the past 50 years, this phenomenon is known as "Employee Withdrawal Behaviors".
“Quiet quitting”! It's hard to escape the buzz popularized on TikTok describing the current disengagement from work by employees. Everyone has their own opinion to try to explain the situation, from the accusatory “young people who believe in the least effort” to the endless “employees who have lost their meaning.”
Ignoring the fact that this phenomenon, which has been rigorously analyzed for more than fifty years by the social sciences, has a name: Employee Withdrawal Behaviors. These behaviors became more widespread when companies, faced with increased global competition, tried to operate differently. When their Taylorian model of executing precise and successive tasks could no longer achieve a satisfactory level of quality and responsiveness, they asked employees to make additional efforts to demonstrate adaptability and cooperation.
And out of fear of losing control over the execution of tasks that were now less defined and more complex, they multiplied procedures, indicators, and coercive management practices. This creates a sterile, even stressful, framework, which is increasingly demotivating for employees. The question is not so much to know if this well-known phenomenon exists as to understand the causes of its acceleration, particularly among the younger generations.
The studies we have been conducting and enriching for the past three years with various public and private organizations have allowed us to understand that, although situations differ from one context to another, some general lessons explain the current situation. Studies show that the pandemic has profoundly changed the relationship between employees and autonomy.
In the majority of cases, they have successfully managed this extraordinary crisis by freeing themselves from inappropriate processes and controls and concentrating on the essentials with their local managers. They “got the job done” even though the health risk was distressing, moving from a hope to a successful experience of working in confidence.
However, very few organizations have undertaken the necessary work to capitalize on the achievements of this period. Most have reverted to old practices of mistrust, control, and reporting, which are all the more powerful in fuelling withdrawal strategies as they negate the remarkable spirit of the teams during the pandemic.
When we investigate further, we understand why distrust of teleworking accentuates the strategies of withdrawal from work. Many companies have set a rigid, uniform and limited framework - a Monday or Friday teleworked is often seen as an extended weekend - to force employees to return to “work.”
Already demotivating for the reasons explained above, a large part of the work that could have been done remotely is now imposed on site. Under the guise of essential socialization or fairness to those who, by the nature of their work, cannot do it remotely, a forced return to premises that have become impersonal flex offices is often unavowed justified to ensure that people work.
Employees then play companies at their own game: since they are excessively deprived of autonomy and their time is wasted in transport for no real reason, they have no reason to do more than is strictly within their remit. And they reserve their extra commitment for private or associative spheres.
Rediscovering the existence of strategies for withdrawing from work under the label of “quiet quitting” will perhaps lead companies to profoundly rethink their operations to go beyond - at last? - Taylorism. The intensity of the current phenomenon shows that, as for the climate, it is urgent.
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