From employee disengagement to “quiet” dismissal, workplace interactions are becoming less direct and more damaging.
Quiet quitting is when employees create impermeable boundaries between their work and personal life and avoid overworking themselves at work. Online conversations on the subject allude to the fact that resigned abandonment is the result of poor managerial skills on the part of managers who fire their employees.
Quiet firing, this time, occurs when a manager intentionally drives an employee away from opportunities for career advancement. Managers who prevent employees from participating in special projects or getting a raise show signs of quiet firing.
A viral TikTok video illustrates these “puts in the closet”. Managers who assign menial tasks, have unrealistic expectations of their employees, and consistently refuse to give them time off are guilty of quiet firing.
What motivates managers to act in this way with their employees? According to Annie Rosencrans, director of people and culture at HiBob, managers who quietly fire their employees do so for several reasons.
scrambled communication
Managers who lack confidence in their leadership skills may be more inclined to act like this with their employees. Instead of taking the time to sit down with an employee and help them solve their problems at work, managers who shelve them completely disengage and hope that the employee will go away on their own.
“It depends on the manager’s intentions,” says Annie Rosencrans. “If a manager thinks someone on their team is not doing well, rather than telling them, they create distance and disengage from the employee in the hope that that person will disengage and walk away on their own. .”
Presumably, busy, overworked managers don’t find the time, patience, or emotional capacity to have difficult conversations with their employees about their job performance. But there is a way for managers to reduce the load and frequency of these difficult conversations.
However, the solution is not easy to implement and managers cannot expect it to be successful overnight. Annie Rosencrans suggests companies embed progressive feedback into their corporate culture to help employees understand gaps in their job performance.
A vicious circle
In an Instagram post, psychiatrist Adam Grant explained that toxic work cultures deny time off to force employees to work harder in order to “earn” paid days off. In other posts, Adam Grant mentioned that employees who are consistently denied time off despite completing their duties at work are likely to quit their jobs.
Quiet firing of employees can be seen as a response to employees who are less engaged at work, while employees can quit silently because they suspect their boss is trying to silently fire them. These actions are an endless, tiring and unproductive feedback loop, but there are solutions to both scenarios.
To help employees better understand where they need to improve their performance, Annie Rosencrans suggests that managers schedule time to talk one-on-one with their direct reports. According to Annie Rosencrans, these meetings should be frequent and performance reviews should take place more than once a year.
Companies may find it helpful to enroll managers in feedback training to help them recognize their employees’ behavior at work and help them when they fall behind on their work. By giving employees valuable feedback, managers tackle the problem head-on instead of avoiding the conversation and waiting for an employee to make a move that justifies leaving.
New Hybrid Habits
Feedback is key to keeping employees engaged and motivated working in a hybrid or remote environment. The lack of face-to-face interaction between employees and managers can give way to employees who fall through the cracks and become less involved in their work.
According to Annie Rosencrans, managers who do not meet regularly with their direct reports are responsible for the fact that employees are left in the dark about their responsibilities and the security of their jobs. Setting goals for employees, developing improvement plans and general check-ins with employees can reduce the likelihood of a quiet departure and a quiet dismissal, according to Annie Rosencrans.
In both cases, the consequences of silent departures and dismissals rest on the shoulders of managers and business leaders. The way we work is changing rapidly and in all facets of the workplace. Once companies embrace the new ways of working and abandon their traditional cultures, chances are that employee morale will finally return to normal.
Source: ZDNet.com