Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

- Quiet quitting always existed in Japan and elsewhere, but the topic became trendy recently

- When talking about quiet quitting it is important to clarify what quiet quitting actually means. There is no crystal clear definition and the boundaries are blurred. Common views of quiet quitting are

・ Doing the bare minimum of work determined by the working contract or job description.
・ Working just enough to not getting fired
・ Rejecting or neglecting anything in addition to the job, even if it is not much additional effort for improving the companies performance
・ Negative or destructive attitude towards the employer or colleagues. It might be seen as a sort of passive aggressiveness, being toxic, showing reluctance or selfishness by letting others of the team doing the necessary work
・ Hiding themselves in order to get overlooked on work assignments
・ Being able to fulfill tasks or improve a situation, but not willing to do so
- In addition, sometimes it can be perceived as quiet quitting when someone is working less than the minimum and showing up late in meetings, missing deadlines, etc. Then the situation becomes actionable with penalties or performance improvement programs

- Or, if someone is rejecting work assignments due to personal rebalancing with the aim to perform properly on the reduced taken workload

- Some people might even reject the term quiet quitting in case of doing just the contractual minimum of work with the justification that they are working is exactly for what they are getting paid for. Why should one do more than requested? If the company wants me to work more, the contacts and compensation should be adjusted accordingly.

- There might be even 'noisy quiet quitters' who are destructive and complaining about every issue which is not working properly on one hand side, but doing cherry picking in tasks and not contributing in fixing the cause of their complaints

- One might think that quiet quitting is the opposite of leadership. On the other hand, there are many employees who do not want to take a lead but they are engaged and they are performing well in their area of expertise. They are showing a sort of expert-leadership

- In Japan there are many quiet quitters because it's difficult to fire people who a doing just the minimum. There is often no job description or even a contract which defines the deliverables of work. As a consequence, it is difficult to justify dismissals because of insufficient work. In Japan there is not so much focus on outcome, there are even quiet quitters who a doing overtime work. As the borderline between sufficient and insufficient work is not clearly defined, quiet quitters sometimes do less than the perceived minimum in order to lower the gray area of barely sufficient work

- Quiet quitting increased together with remote working due to Covid. Previously, many people forgot about the private life due to the work routines or they were just too busy to think about their own work-live balance. Because of Covid the work-life is more interfering with the private live. Therefore they questioned themselves about their own work-life integration and decided for rebalancing towards their private life

- Quiet quitting hurts the personal career, who does not stand out, cannot expect being selected for promotion

- Looking at the root cause for quiet quiet quitting, two types of quiet quitters occur often

・ Mostly young people who enter the workforce full of motivation and ambition to change world. After joining a company, they realize that many constraints and insufficient influence hinder them to proceed in the way they first anticipated. Similarly, putting a motivated person in an environment with inability to contribute leads to quiet quitting
・ Elder people close to retirement without opportunities for promotion do just the minimum required to safely reach the retirement day with minimum effort
- Dealing with qiuet quitting is also related to the two McGregor management theories: the importance of supervision, positive and negative rewarding by management versus creating job satisfaction and motivating employees without direct supervision

- For the upcoming sessions, the following questions are worth to discuss further

・ How is the correlation between quiet quitting and a toxic work environment? Do either cause the other?
・ Why do quiet quitters not quit and look for different opportunities?
・ What is the impact of quiet quitters on teams or even on the employer?
・ How can management identify quiet quitters and how to deal with them?
・ What are the root causes for quiet quitting? Is there a way to quit the quiet quitting?