In our previous article we talked about how quiet quitting first appeared, what causes it, and what kinds of losses it leads to for both employees and the company — and we tried to point out that, for innovation-friendly companies and HR teams, quiet quitting can also be read as an opportunity.
With this follow-up piece, our aim at HRPeak is to help HR teams build awareness around quiet quitting, develop practical measures where possible, and turn the situation into something that works in favour of employees, companies and HR alike.
So now we are opening the question “how can quiet quitting be prevented?” up for discussion, and continuing this series by sharing our proposed solutions.
Why Is It Important to Take Precautions Against Quiet Quitting?
Preventing potential quiet quitting is far easier than trying to re-motivate an employee who is already in that mode toward their role inside the company, or trying to win back their commitment to the organisation.
For that reason, being aware of quiet quitting helps companies, HR management and employees alike avoid serious losses of time, effort and motivation.
It would not be fair to evaluate HR’s work on quiet-quitting prevention as a one-sided gain aimed only at boosting company profit or squeezing maximum output from the employee.
Because every positive approach a quiet-quitting-aware HR function develops in this area also produces positive outcomes on the employee side — meaning important and lasting gains in both the short and long term.
Why Has Quiet Quitting Become So Widespread?
One of the hidden but significant drivers of quiet quitting on the employee side looks like unemployment itself. If it weren’t for the threat of unemployment, capable employees with strong achievement motivation — who might otherwise move on to a different company or job rather than shrink their potential or pull back from working life — are instead drifting, knowingly or unknowingly, into quiet quitting.
The main triggers of quiet quitting from the company and HR side were covered in detail in our previous article under the subheading “What Pushes an Employee Into Quiet Quitting.” But before we get to solutions, it’s worth remembering the powerful impact that hiring the right person into the right role has on preventing quiet quitting right from the recruitment stage.
When an employee isn’t hired into the right position, they can’t put their talents and professional background to use the way they want, they don’t get the results they expect from their work, and the resulting dissatisfaction with their own performance increases the tendency toward quiet quitting.
So from the company’s point of view, we can say there is a strong connection between how well recruitment processes are managed — between whether the right person ends up in the right role — and the spread of quiet quitting.
To Prevent Quiet Quitting, You First Need to Be Aware of It!
Whether or not there is currently an employee in quiet-quitting mode inside the company, taking precautions against it is the right HR policy: it strengthens employees’ commitment to the company and their role, and supports working motivation.
This mindset — one that always keeps the possibility of quiet quitting in view — naturally makes sustainability a priority both in HR management and in working life. Being aware of quiet quitting is, for that reason, the first and most important step to preventing it.
Could Your Employee Be in Quiet Quitting?
Quiet quitting is defined as a state that emerged after the pandemic-era “great resignation” wave, among employees who are unhappy with their job or position inside the company but cannot — or do not want to — leave because of unemployment, financial concerns or other reasons. For them, it has become a way to cope with burnout and/or to keep going at work.
Especially when work and working conditions fall short of supporting social and economic life, anxiety about survival and getting by triggers quiet quitting.
Research and confidential employee surveys show that quiet quitting has, in almost every organisation, across different departments and various positions, turned into a kind of stopgap solution for coping with burnout — and companies, and sometimes even the employees themselves, may not be aware that it is happening.
HR Professionals Are on Alert Against the Quiet Quitting Threat!
As you can also tell from the search for solutions like the four-day working week, quiet quitting has directly and indirectly become one of HR’s top priorities everywhere in the world.
On top of the general life-anxiety created by the global economic crisis, social and cultural problems, the climate crisis and the depletion of natural resources, experts believe that the easily-abused structure of remote work and the uncertainties in working life are making quiet quitting more widespread than we suspect. They are trying, for those reasons, to reshape working conditions and the way work itself is done.
7 Solution Suggestions to Prevent Quiet Quitting
So, how can quiet quitting be prevented? Below we have tried to summarise — in 7 points — what companies and HR teams can do.
From an HR-policy point of view that aims to remove quiet quitting risk entirely, starting from the hiring stage, we particularly want to draw your attention to the positive effects of Online Assessment and Virtual Assessment Center tools.
1. Building a Company Structure That Is Sensitive to Quiet Quitting
Building a company structure that is sensitive to quiet quitting gives HR the chance to analyse the proportional relationship between productivity and employee satisfaction — which in turn helps protect both the employee and the company against quiet quitting.
Instead of ignoring the topic, planning training around it sends the employee a clear message: that they are working with a company and an HR function that are sensitive to quiet quitting. That message is, on its own, one of the most effective ways of stopping employees from sliding into quiet quitting.
2. Hiring the Right Person Into the Right Position From the Start
Hiring the right person into the right position is the most important criterion of success in HR, and the aim is always to employ the candidate with the right qualifications in the right role. HR professionals know very well that long-term wins for both company and employee are only really possible this way — because the employee is also the subject of an investment.
If we keep in mind that placing an employee in a role where they can’t put their skills and capabilities to work is one of the main causes of quiet quitting, we also start to understand how important it is — either from the start or later through internal role changes — to get the right person into the right position.
3. Regularly Tracking Employee Satisfaction and Motivation
Regularly evaluating employees’ requests and needs, and learning how they feel about their work and social life, helps prevent quiet quitting for the following reasons:
- Seeing that their feelings and thoughts matter to the company is the most effective and concrete step for strengthening an employee’s commitment and sense of belonging.
- Employees who realise their problems are not being ignored feel safer inside the company, which in turn seriously supports working motivation.
- Regularly measuring employee satisfaction feeds the employee’s sense of self-worth inside the company, supports their professional confidence, and — because the company’s brand value in the eyes of employees goes up — employees naturally become more willing to be useful to the company.
- When HR shows that it cares about employee motivation, the communication between employees and HR strengthens.
- Once open communication between departments and employees becomes possible, we also gain something else: the employee starts showing up with solution suggestions instead of problems.
4. Bringing Sustainability in Working Life to the Foreground
If we accept the argument that quiet quitting is a way of coping with burnout, we can see far more clearly that sustainability is an effective remedy at that point.
As we said earlier, the “new working order” debates — the four-day work week, remote work — are also discussion and research topics being pursued by experts in the field with the same goal of building a sustainable working life.
While “work” and “the value of working life” are being re-examined around the world, especially among younger generations, ignoring sustainability would mean closing our eyes and ears to this cultural transformation.
Whereas the more sustainability becomes a priority in working life, the more current, dynamic and contemporary the company becomes — and that, in short, is what we can call “win-win.”
5. Rewarding Extra Effort
The clearest sign of quiet quitting is that the employee does not do — does not volunteer to do, avoids doing — anything beyond their assigned task or job. For that reason, rewarding extra effort matters for preventing quiet quitting.
Employees who are sure that any extra effort beyond their job description will be noticed and rewarded will neither slide into quiet quitting nor suffer from a lack of motivation. Rewarding extra effort is an extremely simple and effective way to break the loop a quiet-quitter has locked themselves into.
6. Building a Company Culture Where Everyone Takes Pride in Doing Their Part the Best They Can
Building a company culture grounded in a clear set of values — a body of values that serves the line of business the company operates in and the success of the professionals working in that field — has become an essential part of working life, both for HR and for the other departments. So much so that the world now talks about specialised services such as “company culture design” and “cultural change consulting for companies.”
We can say that the common feature of successful, well-established companies with a solid corporate identity is that they have built this culture in one way or another.
To prevent quiet quitting and to grow productivity over the long term — for both employees and the company — it is important, even essential in today’s business world, to build a company culture where everyone takes pride in doing their part as well as they can, where extra effort is rewarded, and that invests in employee confidence.
Some of the features a culture designed to prevent quiet quitting should have are these:
- Setting a shared sense of purpose.
- Respecting the lines that separate work life from private life.
- Giving employees room to develop their initiative.
- Adopting a participatory company management style.
- Making sure — and overseeing — that company managers listen to employees and take them into account.
- Turning “growing and moving forward together” into the prevailing culture, instead of one-sided sacrifice.
7. Using Online Assessment and Virtual Assessment Center Tools to Prevent Quiet Quitting
Online Assessment and Virtual Assessment Center tools, which evaluate candidates and applications from many angles, help us hire the right person into the right role and so minimise the chance of quiet quitting right from the start.
Throughout the post-hire period, the active use of Online Assessment and Virtual Assessment Center tools in HR management also keeps employees from drifting into quiet quitting.
Our Biggest Weapon Against Quiet Quitting Is the Satisfaction Survey
You should make use of the satisfaction survey to gather regular feedback from your employees and to easily track their requests and needs — because satisfaction surveys create a positive feeling in the employee in a short space of time, and they are also very easy to run.
Running a satisfaction survey is the professional way of telling the employee, “You matter!”
While the company is telling its employee that it sees their self-worth, the same survey also makes a serious, practical contribution to the company’s working culture and brand value.
Use the Personality Inventory to Give Your Employees Career-Management Support
You can use the Personality Inventory — PiT (Personality Item Test) — actively across the whole arc of recruitment, career management and organisational development. In line with its results, you can coach your employees against quiet quitting and mentor them on their career journeys.
Thanks to one of the Personality Inventory-PiT reports — the “Effective Management and Mentoring Tips Report” — you not only analyse a candidate at the hiring stage, you also let your managers give the candidate or employee the support they need around career management.
Give Your Employees Quality Feedback With Case Study and Role Play
With the Case Study and Role Play applications we offer inside the Virtual Assessment Center tools, you can identify the candidate’s/employee’s stronger and/or less strong sides and give them quality feedback that supports career management.
Especially for existing employees who are sliding into quiet quitting during a hopeless phase around promotion or career-management questions, this kind of feedback can help both the employee and the manager get the process back on a positive track.
There Is No Winner in Quiet Quitting!
Finally, we want to underline once more that quiet quitting causes serious losses not only for companies, but also for capable, experienced and talented employees who have the potential to achieve important things in their working life.
The burden of taking precautions against quiet quitting unfortunately falls on HR — but treating that heavy burden as an advantage, and building a company structure that fits, will in the long run work to the benefit of HR management and, in total, of the company.
