HR Faculty Feature

Quiet quitting with Dr. Christina Stamper

Why has quiet quitting become such a topic of conversation among employees and at employers in the past year? Data suggests that younger employees in particular are less engaged at work vs. in the past. Is this accurate?

Throughout various publications, there is no consistent use of the term “quiet quitting.” However, most articles describe it as employees simply doing their job as specified in the job description and not going above and beyond with a great sense of ownership in their work outcomes.

My perspective is that quiet quitting isn’t anything new. What we are seeing is an age-old debate about the role of work in one’s life. There are many possible reasons that this debate is attracting increased attention now. It could be at the forefront of the public’s consciousness because Gen Z employees are new in the workplace and speaking about the topic on social media. Also, millennials and Gen X employees are approaching mid-life and may be re-evaluating what they want out of their careers and lives. The pandemic—a once in a century occurrence (hopefully)—caused individuals to rethink their allocation of time to work and non-work activities. And labor market conditions that favor employees allow more freedom for workers to find new jobs that fit their work ideal.

There are suggestions that quiet quitting may be related to generational differences. It could be that younger workers are choosing a different approach to work in an effort to find a better balance in their lives. They strongly question the dedication of older generations to stressful work and longer work hours and may not have the professional experience to calibrate their need for work-life balance to workplace expectations and norms. It is not surprising that there is also a corresponding increase in unionization efforts in the last year at companies like Amazon, Chipotle, Apple and Starbucks, with employee representatives advocating for better work conditions and increased pay. 

The issue is really about the level of engagement that managers should encourage and expect from their employees, and how they might generate more ownership from their employees concerning the work for which they are responsible. There will always be employees who choose to do the minimum, and employees who choose to go beyond because they want to be promoted, rewarded or are just internally driven. Not surprisingly, employers will typically favor the more motivated and committed employees in many ways. Gen Z employees may not be experienced enough to recognize this, and millennials and others may have enough experience to know that sometimes hard work is not recognized as it should be.

Is quiet quitting something employers should be very concerned about? Why or why not? What does quiet quitting tell us about overall management within organizations? How should organizations respond to quiet quitting and other engagement issues?

Employers should always be concerned when employees disengage from their work responsibilities. Employee disengagement works against the company’s competitive advantage in many ways, whether it be production goals, coworker relationships, service quality, client satisfaction or other success metrics. Ideally, employers should develop a healthy, productive corporate culture that supports employee engagement. This can happen in several ways: 

• Making job tasks interesting to employees instead of designing simple, repetitive tasks.

• Allowing employees more decision power in how they accomplish their job responsibilities.

• Ensuring fair and competitive pay.

• Offering benefit packages that employees find valuable and useful.

• Facilitating positive relationships among coworkers and between employees and their supervisors.

What advice do you have for employees who are engaging in quiet quitting practices?

Make sure you are willing to live with the long-term consequences before you take action—or inaction—in the case of quiet quitting. Employers typically will reward employees who go above and beyond their job descriptions with raises, bonuses, high-status job assignments and promotions. Everyone likes to work with people who bring positive energy to their workplace. If you are disengaged, you will likely not be perceived favorably by your supervisor or coworkers, and the consequences may be isolation in relationships at work, lower-than-expected performance evaluations, and a lack of trust in your ability to get work done. More personally, if you do not enjoy the work you do, or feel you are working in an unhealthy environment, it may be time to find another career option that you find more fully engaging. 

How do you incorporate current news regarding the labor market into the classroom?

In the Introduction to Human Resource Management course, as well as the Staffing Organizations course, I facilitate a lot of discussion about labor market conditions. Students need to understand current trends in the market to comprehend the issues around recruiting and hiring, compensation and unionization efforts, to name a few. In class, we discuss the current unemployment rate, recruiting trends, the changing demographics in the labor market, as well as changing expectations of employers and job seekers regarding job offers and work expectations.

Over the past few years, the pandemic facilitated significant change in the workplace, including the labor market trends of working from home, flexible work scheduling, increased base pay, signing bonuses and other rewards for accepting offers, as well as the “great reshuffling” as workers chose to look for more rewarding and higher-paying positions. The labor market being front and center in the news has resulted in a greater acknowledgement of the important role human resources plays in corporate success, providing wonderful discussion material to help students learn about the profession.

Workplace culture and diversity and inclusion with Dr. Viva Nsair

From your research, what is important to developing a strong, positive workplace culture?

Workplace culture is the framework that establishes how things get done, relationships are developed, successes and failures are addressed—essentially, how to function daily. They are the shared, taken-for-granted and implicit assumptions of the organization. Developing a strong workplace culture requires building community within the organization and having leaders who model the values of the organization. It is like creating a habit on a corporate scale, and just like habits, workplace cultures can be negative or positive. Making it positive means instilling values and practices of trust and psychological safety. In other words, employees are trusted to be competent and not reprimanded for making mistakes or challenging the status quo.  

What role does employee fulfillment play in culture?

When there is a match between what the organization values through its culture and an employee’s values, there is a stronger sense of belonging, engagement and fulfillment for the employee. For example, if the culture of the organization is to value health and well-being, an employee who is more health conscious will feel heard and experience increased job satisfaction.

What role does culture play when job seekers are deciding whether to accept an offer?

When evaluating an offer, job seekers should ask questions about corporate culture and consider what joining a particular workplace culture would mean for their work-life preferences. For example, a family-sacrifice culture where employees are encouraged to prioritize work over family obligations will dictate that employees may stay late in the office instead of being able to pick kids up from school or attend a social non-work function. If the job seeker does not want that work-family dynamic, then they should not accept an offer from that type of organization. Workplace culture strongly influences employee behavior so trying to behave differently than co-workers and established norms is challenging.

How do companies establish and maintain their culture in remote or hybrid settings? Any particular or different challenges or opportunities?

That is an interesting question. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, remote and hybrid work configurations have increased leading to employees potentially feeling more isolated. How companies go about maintaining culture will depend on how many and how often employees work remotely. The main concern with keeping a strong workplace culture is to continue to provide and encourage employees the opportunity to interact with a range of their colleagues from across the organization. Most organizations have put it on the manager to check in with their remote workforce to fight off isolation. Organizations like Cisco have embraced remote work and encouraged their employees to continue to work from home, but have maintained their culture by encouraging and funding social events like weekend camping trips.

What are corporations doing currently to support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts? When a company decides to cultivate or improve their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, how do they ensure any changes implemented are sustained? How would a company effectively measure their efforts?

To start, organizations have created diversity, equity and inclusion director and manager roles where the successful candidates are tasked with reviewing and creating policies, procedures and protocols that encourage more diversity, equity and inclusion. Training against biases, increasing exposure to diversity and encouraging diverse collaborations are some of the outcomes that we are seeing. Directors in these roles will establish targets with senior executives, and the progress made to fulfill these targets is used to measure them. 

Sustaining this progress requires the organization to embed diversity, equity and inclusion in the culture of the organization. To do this, leaders need to gain buy in from others in the organization and teach by example. A strong community that is bought into an idea can perpetuate it and further engrave it into the culture. It is definitely a slow but worthwhile process. 

How do you incorporate current news regarding the labor market into the classroom?

My favorite task when preparing for the classroom is to identify current news that would be relevant to the upcoming topic I plan to discuss. Thanks to social media and resources like YouTube and podcasts, I can bring some really interesting and current information to our classroom conversations. For example, we discussed how Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his decisions to fire and then rehire many employees have caused an interesting and potentially detrimental impact on the company culture. Though this is upsetting for Twitter and the stakeholders involved, discussing it in the classroom is a wonderful opportunity to spark student interest in these topics and teach them to engage with current news using the tools they learn in the classroom.

Compensation and employee retention with Dr. Jen Bott

Has the labor market become "unfrozen" after years of stagnancy due to recent events? What do you see as significant in terms of compensation historically and currently? How do those trends inform what we can expect from job seekers and employers in the near future?

Historically, focus has largely been on pay and annual raises. Equity was defined at the system level in terms of the process for establishing pay grades and ranges and not as much at the individual level. With a limited geographical market from which to recruit, pay decisions were consistent across positions and within an organization. Currently, the labor market remains very uneven. There is a great deal of competition in some sectors mixed with layoffs in others. Remote work has opened up the market for talent, which costs more and has less certainty for long-term retention. COVID-19 influenced and clarified what employees want from work and the importance of work within the greater context of their lives, impacting total compensation in many ways. Successful organizations develop and maintain an understanding of what motivates their employees to ensure the mix in the total rewards system remains competitive.

In addition to salary, what are job seekers looking at in terms of their total compensation when deciding whether to accept a job?

Total compensation, inclusive of benefits and work-life balance opportunities, is even more important to employees now, especially college graduates just entering the market. The desire for competitive health care coverage and rates, opportunities to engage in philanthropic efforts on work time, as well as overall flexibility may have a greater impact on offer acceptance than simply pay rates. The desire for meaningful work, coupled with the post-COVID-19 recognition that work isn’t the only determinant of success or fulfillment, has required organizations to reassess their benefit packages to ensure they meet the needs of current and prospective employees.

How might compensation be affected by hybrid or remote positions?

Hybrid and remote work transformed so many HR practices, including compensation and the related accounting practices that support the distribution of pay and benefits. Previously, many organizations recruited from local or regional markets for talent. With fully or partially remote work now much more common, the possibilities for talent (and the associated costs) have increased remarkably. Organizations must consider how the pay associated with positions—both historically and currently—will be impacted by geographic differences in cost of living. To recruit top remote talent, salaries must be competitive for that locality, which could create issues for the equity of the pay structure for the rest of the organization and employees.

What role does pay transparency play in the corporate environment today?

The importance of pay transparency is increasing, fueled by employee expectations, state and city regulations and a desire to create equitable organizations. At a minimum, sharing pay grades and ranges and key decision points such as cost of living assumptions and geographic influences can improve morale and retention. Pay transparency does have a trickle-down impact on other HR systems, like performance management, so this must be an enterprise-wide strategy to be maximally effective.

What factors are key to employee retention and how have companies been responding in order to retain talent?

Certainly, pay remains an important factor in retention, and organizations are responding. Pay increases returned to the workforce in 2022, as have bonuses. Pay increases have averaged around 3.5% across industries for 2022, which lags inflation, meaning that real wages continue to fall. Organizations must think beyond pay to retain employees, including opportunities for remote or hybrid work. According to McKinsey’s American Opportunity Survey, 58% of workers report working from home at least one day per week and 87% would take the opportunity to work remotely if offered. This has enormous implications for how we think about retention.

What are some notable trends or corporate decisions you think business professionals should take note of?

If organizations haven’t assessed what’s working and what’s not within their total rewards systems since coming out of COVID-19, now is the time! Analyzing the take-up rate on various benefits and pay relative to the market in a much broader way will be critical in remaining competitive. Understanding and allowing employee choice in benefits, including work hours, days and location, may be an important tool in attracting and retaining talent. Examining equity is critically important. Questions such as, ‘Are pay outcomes the same for women and people of color?’ are key. Prospective employees are drawn to organizations that transparently discuss equity and processes for ensuring equitable treatment—not just in pay, but in the processes that inform pay decision making. 

Do you have any advice for job seekers or employers regarding compensation? This could be related to negotiation tactics or considerations for compensation packages for either party.

Data on pay are more available than ever. For job seekers, spend time researching pay grades and ranges. Come into the negotiation with an expectation based in data. For organizations, understand the current market for the positions you are recruiting, including geographical influences. The worst possible outcome is to find the perfect candidate but fail to match expectations on pay and benefits. Transparency at the beginning of the process can help those with higher expectations self-select out. 

How do you incorporate current news regarding the labor market into the classroom?

I spend a lot of time talking about total compensation and am surprised by the sensitivity of today’s students to the many possibilities beyond pay. We talk about work-life balance and the tradeoffs that a focus on this balance may require. The influence of inflation is a constant discussion topic, both on wages, real wages and costs of goods. 

Remote work with Dr. Chen Wang

What does your research indicate about remote work and emerging trends?

Remote work has long been discussed as a family-friendly benefit offered to employees to balance their work and non-work lives, even before the pandemic. Therefore, it has been considered, for a long time, as something that benefits employees but incurs costs for organizations. Employers are especially worried about the potential reduced productivity and performance of employees who work remotely. 

Research that I am conducting with a team, however, suggests that there is a very compelling business case for remote work. Remote workers often feel more autonomy, control, flexibility and decision-making latitude over their work. They tend to be more satisfied with their jobs and have better job performance. Remote workers also experience lower levels of burnout and are less likely to quit. Overall, remote work is generally effective with no major downsides when relevant data is considered.

What are employee expectations regarding remote or hybrid work?

Employees generally expect greater flexibility with their work, including when, where and how to complete their work. The flexibility gives employees a sense of autonomy over their work and actually allows them to be more productive and efficient. At the same time, remote employees will not want to be micromanaged. 

Employees also expect appropriate support and resources to complete their work. Working remotely means that employees may not be able to simply turn around and ask for help from their coworkers. They may also feel isolated and out of the loop of information. It is important for leaders and organizations to establish effective communication channels to keep everyone in sync. 

Employees will expect equitable treatment. Just because they do not work in the office (on some days), they should not be treated differently compared to colleagues who work in the office, especially when it comes to work-related opportunities, such as promotions or being assigned important projects. 

How are employers responding to remote work and a "new normal" in terms of employee expectations post-pandemic?

Employers are definitely seeking out work arrangements that make sense in today’s environment. 

Managers are typically tasked with ensuring that their teams achieve specific goals, and the traditional way of maintaining quality and quantity of work is for managers to be more hands on. Managers may feel that they need to see their employees working most of the time, and find it difficult to relinquish control. Some organizations have come up with strategies like monitoring their employees through video cameras or using online check-in systems, but these methods significantly counter one of the biggest benefits of remote work—giving employees a sense of autonomy. Employers will have to think about more appropriate and effective ways to assess employee performance. Perhaps the goal is not simply to see how many hours employees have worked, but to focus on the quantity and quality of work accomplished. 

Another very interesting finding from our research is that remote workers tend to feel isolated and lonely. This is not at all surprising. When employees work from home, they no longer have water-cooler chats or coffee breaks with coworkers, and these informal social interactions can really help build relationships. Lean communication media (text, email and phone) is common for remote employees and does not contain all the information—70% of communication happens outside of just words through body language, facial expressions and tone of voice. Even with the use of video calls, which is the closest approximation of a face-to-face interaction, we tend to jump straight to the point of the meeting and avoid “wasting” others’ time with informal conversations. Organizations are exploring different ways to strengthen the feeling of connection between employees and their supervisors, coworkers and subordinates and will continue to do so. 

As we come back to a “new normal,” organizations also need to make more effort to understand employees’ needs and preferences. One of the potential happy mediums could be hybrid work, but it is very broadly defined—it could range from coming to the office a few times a month to several days a week. Some organizations aim to bring all employees to work on the same day/s so that they have face-to-face interactions, while others intend to bring employees in separately so that they share a work desk and come to the office on different days. The former may create high overhead costs especially considering the days that no one actually comes to the office; the latter helps with reducing overhead costs, but it may thwart the purpose of having social interactions at work.

Some organizations try to seek employees’ input by sending out surveys asking employees about their preferences regarding the plan to return to the office and the form of hybrid work they would prefer, while others leave the decision to teams and supervisors to decide how and when employees will work in the office vs. at home. This is reasonable to some extent, but it can create equity and fairness issues. Some employees who prefer to work from home may feel compelled to come in the office because they do not want to be “out of sight, out of mind” with their leaders. Ambiguities and uncertainties remain in the process of adapting to a new normal, and a one-size-fits-all solution does not seem to exist.

In your opinion, do you think remote work will be a long-term shift in work environments for employees?

Remote work had already been widely adopted even before the pandemic started, but the pandemic definitely accelerated the speed of adoption. More and more organizations recognized that remote work can help organizations save millions of dollars in daily operating expenses and overhead costs. It also provides huge advantages to both employers and employees by removing the location boundary; employers that had limited labor pools can now acquire talent from other geographical areas, and employees can also choose a location that they prefer to live in. 

A recent survey from Apollo Technical showed:

• 92% of participants surveyed expect to work from home at least one day per week and 80% expected to work from home at least three days per week. 

• 81% of those surveyed believe their employer will continue to support remote work after COVID-19.

• 59% of respondents said they would be more likely to choose an employer who offered remote work compared to those who did not.

• 23% of those surveyed would take a 10% pay cut to work from home permanently.

Upwork’s Future Workforce Report from 2021 suggests:

• 36.2 million U.S. workers will be working remotely by the year 2025. This is an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels.

• 61.9% of companies are planning more remote work now and in the future due to being pushed into remote work during the pandemic. 

These are compelling statistics that indicate remote work is going to be popular and even expected by many employees in the future. 

What does data tell us about productivity of remote teams?

One of the benefits of remote work is that it saves time on a commute. We all have limited physical and cognitive resources that we use every day. By saving time on commuting, many employees are able to redeploy the time to getting work done, which could help improve their productivity. Others might choose to dedicate the saved time to personal well-being—whether working out, meditating or simply sleeping better—which gives them more physical and emotional energy to use on their work. Working remotely also means that there are fewer interruptions, which allows many employees to better focus on their core tasks. 

Leaders also play a very important role in managing remote teams, especially teams that are dispersed across geographical locations and time zones. Leaders are the main facilitators of information exchange among team members, and they also need to make sure to keep everyone involved when making critical decisions. Research suggests that when leaders build strong relationships with team members and communicate with team members more frequently, those employees are more likely to exert influence on decision making, which ultimately helps team innovation. 

What do trends in remote work tell us about today’s work environment in general?

Numerous employees probably never anticipated that they would work from home—or enjoy working from home—but now that they have done it, they realize that it is doable and offers many benefits. The trends that we see from recent surveys and statistics suggest that a large proportion of employees do expect or prefer remote work, or at least hybrid work. Many indicate that this helps them cater to their family life, reduce stress and burnout, save time on commuting and even avoid unwanted interruptions. Remote work also helps bring jobs to employees who may have challenges working in a central office, such as employees with disabilities or chronic conditions. 

Many organizations struggle to retain talent, or are experiencing low levels of engagement, loyalty and commitment among employees. To a certain extent, the trend of remote work also shows that more and more employees do not think of work as the most important aspect of their lives. Many employees, by working remotely, realize how much they have missed out on spending time with family, watching their kids grow up, or tending to their own physical and mental health, and pursuing their passions outside of the workplace. 

How do you incorporate current news regarding the labor market into the classroom?

I enjoy starting classes with a short discussion about current trends in the workforce and how they relate to the topics we discuss in class. I like presenting students with recent industry reports and survey data and discussing the implications of them. I find it particularly important to present opposite viewpoints on any topic and encourage them to see both sides of the coin, and I encourage them to always think critically and not take any viewpoint for granted. Oftentimes, students share opinions based on their own experience and observations—they are so insightful, and this helps everyone in the classroom, including me, learn.