Much ink has been spilled on quiet quitting. What began on TikTok jumped into the headlines as a natural successor to the Great Resignation.
Quiet quitting re-ignited debate on the role of work in our lives and the importance of setting boundaries. It’s worth noting that quiet quitting is just a new name for an old phenomenon. From Homer Simpson to Office Space, pop culture is littered with examples of disengaged employees doing the bare minimum.
A recent Gallup survey found that quiet quitters make up at least half of the U.S. workforce. The data doesn’t show a sizable shift in how workers feel about their jobs over the last few years – lending credence to the idea that quiet quitting isn’t brand new. The data shows significant change among younger workers. The percentage of engaged employees under the age of 35 dropped by six percentage points from 2019 to 2022. “It’s clear that quiet quitting is a symptom of poor management,” Gallup writes, while recommending that company managers do a better job communicating with their reports. “Managers must learn how to have conversations to help employees reduce disengagement and burnout. Gallup finds the best requirement and habit to develop for successful managers is having one meaningful conversation per week with each team member — 15-30 minutes.”
Quiet quitting, loud consequences
What does quiet quitting mean for your company? The root of employee engagement lies in empathic communications. Looking at the stats reveals a massive opportunity to reach younger employees with engaging communications. Gallup research shows:
- Younger workers have dropped 10 or more points in the percentage who strongly agree that someone cares about them, someone encourages their development, and they have opportunities to learn and grow.
- Fully remote and hybrid young workers dropped 12 points in strong agreement that someone encourages their development.
- Less than four in 10 young remote or hybrid employees clearly know what is expected of them at work.
It’s clear that companies have work to do when it comes to building manager engagement and ensuring they are equipped to build morale among their teams in a hybrid environment. Communicators play an essential role in building employee engagement and culture in a hybrid workforce. Thoughtful and empathic communications can help create accountability for team performance, collaboration and customer value while helping employees see how their work contributes to the organization’s purpose. And since customer experience starts with employees, communications can pave the path to improving total experience.
Reimagine customer satisfaction and loyalty
Evaluating the effectiveness of communications and adjusting based on performance can help cultivate engagement among employees and customers. Using a Customer Data Platform (CDP), communicators can move from transactional journeys to trusted advisors by targeting messages at specific audience segments. A CDP helps communicators move from transactional, one-off messages to proactive communications to help build deeper relationships. Marketers can work smarter by automating messages and shifting to on-demand, event-based communications.
Choosing a next-generation communications platform with data and insights capabilities can help you build engagement, improve loyalty and cultivate relationships. OpenText™ offers a communications and customer experience platform that is cloud-native, scalable and built for the enterprise. Get started.
