Understanding Employee Disengagement Beyond the ‘Quiet Quitting’ Trend
Posted on March 17, 2024
What is Quiet Quitting and How Does It Affect Employee Engagement?
The term “quiet quitting” emerged in 2022 as a TikTok trend. Generally, this is when employees do the bare minimum to keep their role but don’t devote extra time or energy to their role or company. While the term has exploded in popularity, it oversimplifies a complex issue: widespread employee disengagement.
[Quiet Quitting] in practice might mean:
Personio.com, “Quiet Quitting: A Proper Guide to a Very Real Trend”
- Not volunteering for extra work, leadership roles or responsibilities
- Not speaking up in meetings unless addressed directly
- Not responding to emails or messages outside of work hours
- Turning down work outside of their job description
- Becoming isolated from the rest of the team and avoiding social events
- Taking a more-than-usual number of sick days (absenteeism)
We all need downtime from work, not only for our mental health but also to allow our ideas to develop in the background and bring fresh creativity to our jobs.
While some companies seem to expect employees to work late, answer emails on the weekends, or eat lunch at their desk, this is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about disengaged employees who take the maximum sick days (even when they’re not sick), see a problem to solve and ignore it, and participate physically but not mentally in their team activities.
It is possible to create a healthy workplace culture where employees are excited to bring their ideas to work and feel engaged, and allow them the time they need to recover and rest.
A disengaged workforce has dramatic consequences and costs 8.8 Trillion dollars a year (put pinky finger to mouth a la Mike Myers in Austin Powers).
So what can we do about it? In this article, we will dive into:
Table of Contents
What Drives Employee Disengagement in 2024?
The Power of Purpose: Why Your Employees Need It (And How to Show It)
Belonging Matters: Building Community & Connection at Work
“I Feel Creative At Home, But How Can I Be More Creative At Work?”
Practical Tools for Employee Engagement
What Drives Employee Disengagement in 2024?
In a world where employees feel replaceable, what concrete strategies can leaders implement to build a culture where hard work is recognized, contributions matter, and people are empowered to think outside the box?
Hot tip: It’s not stacking communications with buzzwords like “think outside the box” and “investing in people.” Cue the eyes rolling around like marbles on the Titanic.
Employees feel disengaged when they feel irrelevant, inconsequential and taken for granted:
- Comments about “being a family” but asking staff to work on a long weekend are incongruent.
- Asking your employees to work late to sit through boring and useless meetings where nobody’s input seems to matter is a waste of time.
- Asking people to solve problems and find solutions, but forcing 7 layers of management to review every little decision makes teams feel like asking to go to the bathroom in 2nd grade.
In a workplace where disengagement is rampant, creativity isn’t a luxury – it’s actually a little known secret to finding that spark of engagement. Yep, creative employees are engaged employees.
Here are some stats to back it up:
- If you are working with Gen Z, 88% identify creativity as essential for their success.
- Others view creativity as instrumental to their engagement at work – employees who feel creative are half as likely to be looking for another job.
- More than 4 in 5 respondents in the Slack State of Work report say that feeling happy and engaged is a key driver of their productivity. What makes people happy? Using their creativity, of course!
- Teams who feel like they did well on a creative task together have more cohesion, driving engagement in teams.
- Gallup found a link between workplace engagement and creativity, which leads to innovation and market share
Engaging creativity in all aspects of work, from stakeholder presentations to personalizing an email signature, provides feelings of happiness and connects us to the feeling of being valued for our unique contributions.
After all: creativity is an outlet to transform mundane work into that which is genuinely fulfilling.
The Power of Purpose: Why Your Employees Need It (and How To Show It)
In 2023, 50% of employees in the U.S. were disengaged (quiet quitting”).
“Employees still feel more detached from – and less satisfied with – their organizations and are less likely to connect to the companies’ mission and purpose or to feel someone cares about them as a person.”
Gallup, “In New Workplace, U.S. Employee Engagement Stagnates.”
While compensation matters, it is not the number one driving factor for most employees. Creativity drives deeper fulfilment that sparks true employee engagement.
Additionally, how companies approach Corporate Social Responsibility drives engagement, in addition to creativity! Tong found that solving a thorny problem (especially together), seeing an idea implemented, or finding a way to streamline a cumbersome process are tangible victories that connect employees to the why behind their work.
Despite a common misconception: fostering creativity isn’t about bean bag chairs or ping pong tables, nor is it about hiring an elite team for creative potential. Every person has the capacity to be creative and engaging your current employees’ creativity is the most direct route to daily innovation.
When you empower employees and recognize that their daily problem-solving directly impacts the company mission, they feel connected and invested in company success. That is how you attract and retain not just workers but truly engaged contributors.
Creativity drives employee engagement through a deep satisfaction in a job well done. Numerous studies describe the mood and resilience-boosting properties of engaging in an everyday creative act like knitting or cooking. Now, we don’t need to start offering knitting groups at work, (actually, why not?). But, if we can tap into the mood-lifting benefits of creative engagement, results will follow.
The mood-boosting effects of creativity are mediated through problem-solving. Anything creative is solving a problem – whether it’s how to represent a tree on a canvas, or how to figure out that macro in Excel to shave minutes off a report. And humans love solving problems, more than anything else. When we give people the chance to solve problems on their own, we provide autonomy, self worth and confidence in their contribution.
Build opportunities for your staff to add creative touches to their reports, decorate the office for the holidays (real or invented), and work together on solving your latest problem. Consider connecting these initiatives to your Corporate Social Responsibility goals. This can help to drive employee engagement with their own purpose and that of the organization.
Belonging Matters: Building Community & Connection at Work
It’s hard to maintain a positive spirit at all times. The reality of daily tasks and minutia can sap our creative energy like a mosquito in Louisiana. Creative thinking shifts employees from simply reacting to problems to proactively seeking innovative solutions. Suddenly, obstacles become exciting challenges that further the company’s mission, not just annoyances.
Taking ownership of this solution-focused mentality requires a psychologically safe environment where teams feel that their managers have their backs and that they can take small risks to be creative when finding solutions.
Collaboration Fosters Employee Engagement and Creativity
Ideas spark new ideas, solutions exceed what individuals could do alone, and the very act of collaboration fosters the connections vital to employee engagement. Teams that collaborate creatively drive innovation and performance and feel more engaged with their work.
Nobody likes a micromanager; it is a surefire way to crush employee engagement. You get what you expect.
Expect mediocrity? Get mediocrity.
Expect performance and new ideas that will change the business? Hold my glasses.
By giving employees creative freedom within a framework tied to larger goals , you empower them to succeed.. They feel ownership over their work, driving a sense of purpose far stronger than simply following orders. This isn’t about chaos; it’s about trusting employees to be their own problem-solvers.
It’s time to start building an environment where the other 82% to start bringing their unique creativity to the table as well.
“I Feel Creative At Home, But How Can. I Be More Creative At Work?”
In a past LinkedIn Poll I posted, 68% of respondents said they felt a bit or totally different at home compared to work. Despite a small sample size, I feel like this represents what I see in organizations and what people tell me from all industries about their ability to show up at work as themselves.
People feel creative at home but struggle to bring that creative expression to work: why is that?
Many of us show up at work with a much different persona to how we are at home. This isn’t all bad… how we talk to a customer is different than how we talk to our toddler. (Well, sometimes it can feel the same…)
One attendee explained that her role did not leave room for creativity. Her role was clearly defined and her analytical skills were prioritized. In her role in regulatory reporting, rigor was essential. However, there are many opportunities to use a creative mindset in how to approach her everyday work, to connect her role to a larger purpose in the organization with creativity.
While we don’t want her randomly embedding poems into a regulatory report, there are other ways to engage her creativity:
- Designing a workspace or workflow
- Using new tools to manage her email
- Finding a new spot for lunch
- Learning how to say “would you like to join me for lunch” in a co-worker’s native language
These are all potential ways to connect to work and drive more engagement and purpose, through creativity.
The Perils of Conformity
In the book Creative Culture, Jennifer Mueller talks about the biases we hold when working with colleagues. If a creative idea is presented by a “non-creative” type of employee such as an accountant in a suit, it was rated less creative than someone who is perceived as a creative, and vice versa. Often people are held back from sharing groundbreaking ideas and contributing dialogue due to a bias about who they are based on their role. If you have ever been surprised to learn about the painting passion of an engineer, or the expressive dance hobby of the HR manager, you’re not alone. We all have creative sides to our personality, and if we can feel comfortable to bring them to work, knowing that they are not only accepted, but welcomed? That sounds like a place where I would want to work.
If only there was a whole blog about The Unconscious Bias Against Creativity at Work… (oh yeah, there is, if you want to learn more!)
But here’s the TLDR:
The same old same old advice: Stay in your lane, stick to what you know, and conform to the role that the company or society has defined for you is as obsolete as a fax machine.
That kind of thinking is a lost opportunity. Those rigid boxes might have worked when we were in an assembly-line, linear-thinking world. But nowadays, it is crucial to leverage the creative thinking skills of every single person in your organization, regardless of role.
A Personal Example
I am a lifelong learner. During my time at a global packaged foods company, I was thrilled to learn about all the amazing things they were doing: world-class research, genius marketing teams, and customer insights. I was like a kid in a candy store. In fact, one of the reasons I joined the company was that I saw the possibilities for future growth into new areas.
But when I showed interest in these aspects of the company I was firmly denied. Not in your lane. Stick to what we need you to do. It’s a waste of your time to spend time with other departments. No, you can’t travel to that conference to develop expertise. But we need you to travel to head office to learn how to write Purchase Orders in SAP. (Yes, I am particularly sore about that one.)
That innovation you want to explore? No. And no, we don’t have an alternative to drive efficiency in that process. Just keep working late using this ridiculous system.
I started out engaged, excited, I was drinking the Kool-aid from a firehose à la Gen X. And, like many talented and driven employees, I had options. So, when I saw the writing on the wall, I quit.
But first, I quietly quit.
Why bother killing myself for an organization that doesn’t give two hoots about me or doesn’t even (incredulously) provide me with tools to succeed? Why should I care about them when they don’t care about me? And why should I care about them when THEY don’t even care about them?
It wasn’t all bad. In many ways, I was afforded opportunities to use my creativity, and the position gave me opportunities to learn and grow in other ways; for that, I am grateful. But when these times started being outweighed by the brick walls, I noticed that I didn’t care anymore, and that I didn’t want to bother fighting anymore. It was time to go. Some people get to that point and don’t go. They languish in mediocrity, stuck between the energetic potential of the beginning and the long march to the end.
Engaging creativity is a simple yet effective way to bring back that optimism and energy.
That doesn’t have to mean paint nights and improv or exchanging hand-made gifts in a tapas restaurant with elf hats on in mid-December (but it can, that was a real-life example…)
Allow your employees time for weird passion projects, like 3M and Google, even if you don’t see the ROI. Allow and encourage people to bring their personality to work, and don’t prejudice people based on their roles. Conformity kills creativity.
Caveat. Isn’t there always a caveat? There is a fun little paradox to conformity.
If you demand conformity from your employees, and create rigid criteria for engagement, you will limit innovation and creativity: Hello, Borg!
A group of automatons that need direction and can only work in the narrowly defined criteria of their job: Is that what you wanted?
However, there is a positive application of conformity. That is, to expect everyone to conform to the idea of engaging their individuality. If everyone is expected to show more initiative and personality and bring their unique POV (point of viw) to work, this works especially well for those with fewer tendencies to express their creativity.
The conformist agreeably conforms to the expectation that they show more originality. Conformity fosters individuality. So meta.
Practical Tools for Employee Engagement
It takes time to create a workplace culture of innovation where your employees feel safe to share their ideas.
Here are 5 actionable ideas you can use to start fostering creativity and collaboration in your team to drive employee engagement, as soon as this week:
1. Embed Creativity into Every Meeting
If you know anything about me, I highly encourage building the habit of creativity. Like any skill, it gets better with practice! Try using a divergent/convergent exercise at each meeting.
As Gallup has found, giving people:
- The expectation to be creative
- The time to be creative
- The flexibility to take risks
are the key drivers for a creative organization.
What better time than a meeting to embed this mindset into your culture? Get my free download with plenty of exercises and tips on how to plan creative meetings!
2. Consider passion projects
Allow your employees to take reasonable time to explore other parts of the company and what may seem like frivolous projects.
When 3M gave their employees time to explore other interests, a lot of ideas flopped and fizzled. But one idea led to the most profitable idea thus far, after someone invented a useless weak adhesive. It wasn’t a great idea until another employee found a use for it, to mark songs for their choir. That product was the post-it note.
Passion projects are a great catalyst for cross functional collaboration to drive innovation. Consider that when “outsiders” attend meetings, it might not offer anything of tangible value. But, the mere presence of a “naive outsider” improves the decision making skills of the group. The homogenous groups in these studies were more confident in their ideas, but they were usually wrong.
Why not offer internal meeting exchange programs? If nothing else for employees to quality control the snacks. It might seem frivolous. Or it might be genius.
You can even utilize AI as an “outsider” if you don’t have many people to dedicate to a problem.
3. Consider hackathon days
Some companies, instead of offering a percentage of employee time to a passion project, will have hackathon days. These are internal events that drive a focused approach to innovation and develop a maker culture. The “like” button was developed during one of these hackathons. Tech companies are not the only ones who can benefit. Hackathons can drive employee engagement, cross-functional collaboration, and creativity and innovation as a core value.
4. Pick things that don’t matter – at first
Start small. Tackle a small challenge like the break room microwave. Or stationery choices. Use the process for an issue that doesn’t matter to learn from the process, and to allow people to fail when it doesn’t matter at first.
5. Flexibility
Allow people to brainstorm their own way. Some people think visually, in words, or in movement. Consider allowing the contribution of ideas anonymously at first to encourage safety, or allowing teams to brainstorm individually in their own way before contributing to the group.
Creativity is one Solution to Quiet Quitting.
If you are looking for an edge to keep your staff from quietly quitting, loudly leaving, or moderately volume-d disengagement, consider how you might engage their creativity.
Make sure that leaders have the support, mindset and skills to allow it to happen for every employee. Embrace the importance of failure, and know that any change comes with some messiness and failure.
Because, if you get it right? And people are sharing their creativity?
Or, when teams feel confident in their ability to share their unique personality, not defined by role expectations, and know that they are accepted for who they are?
That is a place where anyone would want to come to work. Even on Monday.