And The Solution Isn’t What You’d Expect
When the ‘godfather’ of flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, went looking for the source of human happiness and optimal experience, his journey led him to uncover something unexpected – our paradoxical relationship with work. It is this paradox, in part, that is responsible for the latest manifestation of discontent at work: ‘Quiet Quitting.’
The term “quiet quitting” became a viral employment phenomenon courtesy of TikTok. Thousands of workers embraced the idea of ‘acting their wage,’ or ‘just doing what they’re paid for’ to find balance and take control of their working life.
Yet, despite an avalanche of editorials and opinions published to explain, champion, or subvert this movement, something is missing – a functional place to start bridging the chasm between workers and work.
Unpacking The Problem
To understand how we ended up in such a complicated and tumultuous relationship with work, we need to investigate what the Covid-19 pandemic revealed to us, and not just about work, but about us as individuals.
When Covid shutdowns began in the spring of 2020 two unique and specific anomalies happened simultaneously. First, the vast majority of workers came face to face with their own mortality in an uncomfortable and unexpected way. As is common in such circumstances, a re-evaluation of priorities, values, and purpose took center stage in not only their own lives, but in the collective consciousness of their communities, country, and culture. The connectedness provided by social media platforms assisted in the ability to cope with, and connect to, ideas that many rarely took the time to explore with any real depth.
Second, we had the time to take part in this evaluation process. Prior to the pandemic, finding the time amid the hustle and bustle of work, family life, and the space needed to consider such large questions, was a luxury. But with the conditions that came with Covid, many had no choice but to confront what we had previously left hidden in darker corners.
Some experts over-optimistically suggested that our ‘pandemic epiphanies’ would help us discover more of what we wanted out of work. That turned out to be half right.
What about ourselves and our relationship with work keeps us from employment bliss?
Three Basic Human Needs
At its best, work fulfills three basic, yet essential, human needs. First, work provides us with a sense of belonging. Our colleagues make up a large part of our social lives. We find and form meaningful relationships at work. What occurred during the pandemic shutdowns was much of the camaraderie and connection that people receive while working with others was suddenly lost.
A sense of belonging improves our work experience. Findings from the Workhuman Employee Experience study concluded that “supportive co-worker relationships are an important driver of a positive work experience. When those relationships are present in the workplace, people report a much more positive employee experience than when that support is absent (77 percent compared to 35 percent).” When social interactions became limited during Covid, all that was left was the work itself, which, understandably for many, felt less than fulfilling.
Second, work ideally gives us some security and much-desired consistency in life. Looking toward the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, just above our Physiological needs like food and water, lies Safety. Safety often includes in its definition, security of employment and prosperity. We want to have a stable job, one that can lead us toward a prosperous future with a sense of certainty that we crave in a complex world.
Third, work is part of our identity. It provides us with a sense of purpose. While some of that purpose can come from the outcome of work – what we produce – some of it also comes from our contribution to our team and community.
The Paradox Of Work
In a time of turmoil, humans have two options: to become paralyzed by a feeling of helplessness, or search for a ray of hope that might bring some much-needed happiness. While workers were suffering during the pandemic and fed up with the prevailing circumstances their current job had become, they went looking for help – first in new work, then, while dealing with the regret of that choice, started searching for it outside of work.
Looking for fulfillment, purpose, and satisfaction outside of work is a message resonating with the masses who are not so quietly ‘Quiet Quitting.’ When looking at the findings of Csikszentmihalyi’s research, it is easy to understand why.
Csikszentmihalyi was obsessive in his quest to understand what makes us happy and what he revealed in his seminal work, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, is that most people find their ‘optimal experience’ while working.
Participants in his studies reported far higher rates of engagement while working than while relaxing, enjoying leisure time, or not working.
Paradoxically, these same participants stated they would rather be ‘somewhere else’ other than work, and felt more motivated when not working. Despite the fact that they were less engaged in what they were doing in their ‘off time.’ Csikszentmihalyi believed this paradox exists because of our cultural attitudes toward work. He said,
“When it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their senses. They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like. They think of it as an imposition, a constraint, an infringement of their freedom, and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible.”
Who Is To Blame?
The prevailing idea now among ‘Quiet Quitters’ is that authority and leadership have let them down. Many workers feel that their job is not what they expected, not what they were promised, and that there is no certainty or predictable trajectory. Thus bosses (just like political leaders) can not, and should not, be entirely trusted. The result of this is that workers do not believe that there is a good enough reason to give any more of themselves to the work than the bare minimum.
This leaves the current portrait of working life in a state of flux. Workers aren’t fully appreciative of the value work brings to their life, leadership has let them down, they feel unable to find their basic needs being met where they used to, and they are struggling to find answers.
How To Solve Quiet Quitting?
Amid a swath of resignations and a general feeling of discontent leading to the rise of ‘Quiet Quitting,’ where can leaders find a way to remedy this problem?
Surprisingly, much of this issue is repairable by reimagining the way organizations think about the work they offer, and this process begins by changing the way they hire.
At the heart of the acrimony people have for their work-life, is the growing gap between their hope for what work can provide and the reality of what it is.
A striking recent example of the gap between the expectations of workers and the reality of work is clear in a study of 2,500 workers conducted by The Muse. Their research revealed that 72% of workers surveyed who had left one unfulfilling job during the ‘Great Resignation’ hoping to find something better experienced ‘surprise or regret’ in their new position because the position they had quit their previous job for ended up being ‘very different’ from what they were led to believe.
As resignations piled up, employers quickly backfilled seats and competed for scarce talent by fast-tracking hiring processes and not taking time to reimagine roles or restructure teams. In some cases, managers may have misrepresented opportunities (intentionally or unintentionally in their haste) or overpromised possibilities to get a candidate to say ‘yes’.
It doesn’t take long for that miscommunication to surface discontent and distrust.
To repair this lack of trust and restore employees’ ability to feel like they can prosper, belong, and take part in meaningful work, there is good news.
Via thoughtful role design and step-by-step tools, hiring managers (who control the ball in any hiring process) can be prepared and empowered to have candid conversations with candidates, to share the meaningful value of their opportunity, evaluate candidates’ intrinsic motivations (not just professional skill sets), and make future hiring decisions based on criteria that have been proven efficacious for decades. Even as work changes, humans remain human.
We have the tools to move from Quiet Quitting to Engaged Employment. Everyone wins.
