Quiet Quitting: Understanding and Addressing Disengagement

Disengagement is a challenge for organizations around the world. A complex concept, disengagement covers everything from fatigue to shrinking attention spans, via general disinterest and mentally drifting off to a beach. For businesses, disengagement means slow productivity and restricted growth. For individuals, it may be an indicator of loneliness or depression and can develop into fatigue or burnout.

What is quiet quitting?

Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report found that 77% of the global workforce are not engaged. The report described these employees as ‘quietly quitting’, a phrase that swept across TikTok in 2022.

Quiet quitters put in the minimum effort to keep their job, but don’t go the extra mile. Typical behaviours may include not speaking up in meetings unless directly spoken to, not volunteering for tasks outside the job description and refusing to work overtime.

According to Gallup, people who are quiet-quitting ‘aren’t just unhappy at work. They are resentful that their needs are not being met and are acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers potentially undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.’

What are the causes of disengagement?

Several long-term issues contribute to disengagement. These include expecting people to do more for less as a matter of routine, and restricting ‘watercooler’ moments of connection within the team in favour of a hard-edged form of efficiency that is draining and ultimately inefficient.

Deep-seated causes also include the prevalence of technology which can disrupt the way we think. In his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman suggested that fast thinking leads to impulsive responses, like changing gear in a car. Slow thinking supports moments of careful analysis, such as negotiating a deal.

Before the 21st century, people enjoyed a healthy balance of fast and slow thoughts. Today, not so much. This is because of smartphones, social media, online browsing and the way we watch content.

Smartphone users are a commodity. Their attention is sold to organizations who buy advertising rights via automated “ad auctions.” This is why social media platforms pester users to send replies, comments and likes. In the battle for our attention, putting the phone down is a blow against the advertisers. Our phones continually beep, ping and vibrate, provoking us to quickly reply. In a world of fast replies, people are more likely to make a fast, unthinking purchase.

Amidst all this urgency, there’s not much room for slow thinking. It’s becoming harder to focus on careful thoughts that lead to clear decisions and commitment. We’re becoming less balanced in our thinking and less interested in tasks that require attention – like work.

What is the impact on mental health?

It’s not just social media that undermines us. Our watching habits are changing too. The proliferation of content is bewildering. We can choose from literally five billion films on YouTube and thousands more on Netflix, Prime, Apple and so on. We are inundated with choice. We don’t have to commit (i.e. engage); if we don’t immediately like something, we can give up and choose something else. In this context, choice isn’t freedom. It’s confining us to a simplistic way of reacting.

The actions of our 21st century lifestyles have three consequences:

1. Poor mental health: there is a correlation between high use of social media and damage to the mental health of teenagers and young adults. Many studies (e.g. Kalpidou et al, 2011; Mehdizadeh, 2010; Tazghini and Siedlecki, 2013) show a link between heavy use of social media and low self-esteem.

2. Shrinking attention spans: according to Harriet Griffey, author of The Art Of Concentration, we have adopted an ‘always-on, anywhere, anytime, anyplace behaviour, we exist in a constant state of alertness that scans the world but never really gives our full attention to anything.’

3. Challenges to critical thinking: employees who struggle with concentration are more prone to skim-reading, half-listening and being present but not fully engaged (presenteeism). When important information is not properly understood, critical thinking suffers – leading to misunderstanding and poor decisions.

As well as employees’ personal investment in smartphones, businesses too are investing in technology – often compounding some of the negative consequences noted above. For example, spyware – monitoring someone’s keystrokes – can be dehumanizing. Research suggests that workers can lose up to 32 days a year navigating between efficiency apps intended to speed up workplace productivity.

Tech used in this way undermines trust and cohesion. This chips away at our sense of belonging which is a deeply rooted human motivation.

Indeed, in the 21st century, despite our better digital connections, millions of people feel disconnected and isolated. Loneliness is a silent epidemic, costing US employers more than $154 billionper year in stress-related absenteeism. In the UK, a conservative estimate suggests that more than a million workers experience loneliness, leading to a cost estimated at £2.5 billionper year.

How can we manage quiet quitting?

In a 2022 articleon quiet quitting, business researchers Anthony C. Klotz and Mark C. Bolino noted that employees who go above and beyond may be giving more to their job than their peers, but this is balanced by benefits such as increased social capital, wellbeing and career success.

For Klotz and Bolino, however, ‘The quiet quitting trend suggests that employees are increasingly feeling that this exchange has become unbalanced: Employers are demanding additional effort from workers without investing in them enough in return.’

By embedding trust, respect, belonging and psychological safety into company culture, employers commit to what we call social wellbeing. We believe this to be more effective than typical wellbeing strategies – including the 89 examples recently shown to be unsuccessful. By better protecting the workforce, employers strengthen their organization’s resilience. And in the uncertain 2020s, resilience is worth focusing on.

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