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10
Oct 24

Quiet Quitting

If you’ve spent any time on social media or news sites within the last couple of years, you’ve probably come across the term “quiet quitting.” This term refers to individuals meeting the minimum requirements of their job description and not putting in any additional effort or time than absolutely necessary (Harter, 2023; Daugherty, 2024). A bit of a misnomer, these individuals continue to be employed and compensated but are actively disengaged and unenthusiastic about the job; in essence, “‘you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond’” said Zaid Khan (Rosalsky & Selyukh, 2022). This results in fewer behaviors associated with organizational citizenship, such as working longer hours when needed, responding to emails and other communication outside of working hours, attending non-mandatory meetings, assisting coworkers, and volunteering for tasks or events sponsored by the organization (Gruman, 2017a, pp. 268-9). Estimates of the prevalence of quiet quitting vary, though a recent Gallup report indicated that nearly 60% of the global workforce consists of such employees; in the U.S., the percentage was highest among workers 18-35 years old (Harter, 2023). Quiet quitting may be more prevalent in Generation Z workers due to a cultural shift in attitudes toward work and work-life balance (Alaql, AlQurashi, & Mehmood, 2023; Xueyun et al., 2023). As Zaid Khan explained,

“‘You’re still performing your duties, but you’re no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life. The reality is it’s not – and your worth as a person is not defined by your labor’” (Rosalsky & Selyukh, 2022).

So what factors contribute to quiet quitting? Is it more than a matter of low job satisfaction that produces withdrawal behavior (Gruman et al., 2017a, pp. 266-8)? Some look to the Social Exchange Theory to explain the phenomenon, emphasizing the importance of understanding how the interactions between employees and supervisors or employees and employers influence work expectations and outcomes (Gruman et al., 2017b, p. 144). Job burnout, in particular, had a negative impact and resulted in greater quiet quitting intention in a cross-sectional survey of GenZ workers (Xueyun et al., 2023). Burnout was associated with poor work conditions (e.g., inadequate resources to perform tasks, unclear expectations, perceived lack of manager support), fewer perceived opportunities for career development, lower perceived organizational support, and lack of emotional connection to identify with and contribute within an organization. These insights suggest that addressing the issue will require better communication of employer expectations, resources and opportunities for employees, and of employee needs and desires. Ensuring that employees feel cared for, including taking steps to prevent or mitigate burnout, will also be critical.

Others draw upon the concept of social loafing to explain how quiet quitting can occur. This phenomenon explains the tendency of individuals to put in less effort when working in a group, particularly if the associated rewards are for the collective group rather than for individual effort (Aronson et al., 2022; Bell & Kennebrew, 2023). Bell and Kennebrew (2023) describe a role for social loafing in quiet quitting and offer some recommendations. Completion of the tasks outlined in the job description, and nothing more, allows for social loafing to occur; i.e., not going “above and beyond” but rather doing just the bare minimum. They highlight the importance of mutual trust between employers and employees, understanding and acting in alignment with the perceptions of the social contract between the organization and its employees, and job descriptions as a tool for two-way understanding of expectations, as ways to counteract quiet quitting within an organization. From this viewpoint, quiet quitting could be considered a problem related to poor management, failure to adequately motivate employees, and/or not seeking employee feedback that could benefit mutual interests. There may also be an organizational culture of not acknowledging individual contributions and failing to remediate low-performing employees, which can be draining on the more productive employees.

Suggestions have been proposed to reduce quiet quitting of employees. These range from reducing job burnout through improving employee perceptions of work conditions and institutional support, career development opportunities, and sense of belonging with the organization (Lu et al., 2023; Xueyun et al., 2023) to more effective use of social contracts, psychological contracts, and two-way interpretations of job descriptions (Bell & Kennebrew, 2023). Taking steps to decrease work overload, promote employee well-being, and increase psychological empowerment through greater autonomy may further be beneficial (Lu et al., 2023). Improving job satisfaction is also likely to be protective against quiet quitting. Job satisfaction is likely to be higher when employees have mentally challenging work that they enjoy, equitable rewards, supportive colleagues, and supportive work conditions (Locke, 1976). Job satisfaction may be improved by offering tasks that require skill variety, ability to see a task from beginning to completion, assigning meaningful tasks, allowing for role-appropriate autonomy, and providing timely and helpful feedback to employees (Hackman & Oldham, 1976).

As some have suggested, quiet quitting may be an individual’s adaptation to protect their health and life satisfaction (Rosalsky & Selyukh, 2022). Instead of this adaptation by the employee, a better approach might be creating more effective matches between the individual and the job (Hulin & Judge, 2003). Soren and Ryff (2023) further make the case for enacting a eudaimonic vision for work; that is, creating work environments and policies that support employees’ ability to derive happiness through meaningful, purposeful work. This type of work is associated with better physical and mental health, and overall well-being. At the organizational level, they propose clearly outlining values, developing policies and practices to support those values, and rewarding leadership behaviors that prioritize meaningful work (Soren & Ryff, 2023). At the individual level, they recommend knowing one’s own dispositional signature to ensure a better person-job fit, setting goals and motivating oneself to achieve these, and developing positive personal narratives about one’s work.

Is quiet quitting a troubling trend, an adaptive mechanism for achieving work/life balance, or something else? Do we owe our employers enthusiasm and going “above and beyond”? Are there specific benefits to the employee for going beyond the job description? Please share your thoughts in the comment section!



References:

Alaql, A. A., AlQurashi, F., & Mehmood, R. (2023). Data-driven deep journalism to discover age dynamics in multi-generational labour markets from LinkedIn media. Journalism and Media, 4: 120-145.

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Sommers, S. R., & Page-Gould, E. (2022). Group processes: Influence in social groups. In: Social psychology (11th Ed.). Pearson.


Bell, R. L. & Kennebrew, D. (2023). What does Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Chester I. Barnard have to do with quiet quitting? American Journal of Management, 23(1): 1-11.


Daugherty, G. (2024, October 8). What is quiet quitting – and is it a real trend? Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-quiet-quitting-6743910

 
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applying social psychology to organizations. In: Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (3rd Ed.). SAGE.


Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applying social psychology to sports teams. In: Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (3rd Ed.). SAGE.


Hackman, J. R. & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16: 250-279.


Harter, J. (2023, May 17). Is quiet quitting real? Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/398306/quiet-quitting-real.aspx


Hulin, C. L. & Judge, T. A. (2003). Job attitudes. In: Handbook of Psychology (Vol. 12, pp. 255-276). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.


Locke, E. A. (1976). The nature and causes of job satisfaction. In: Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 1297-1350). Chicago, IL: Rand-McNally.


Lu, M., Mamun, A. A., Chen, X., Yang, Q., & Masukujjaman, M. (2023). Quiet quitting during COVID-10: the role of psychological empowerment. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 10: 485-503.


Rosalsky, G. & Selyukh, A. (2022). The economics behind ‘quiet quitting’ – and what we should call it instead. NPR Plant Money. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/09/13/1122059402/the-economics-behind-quiet-quitting-and-what-we-should-call-it-instead


Soren, A. & Ryff, C. D. (2023). Meaningful work, well-being, and health: Enacting a eudaimonic vision. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20: 6570-6590.


Xueyun, Z., Al Manun, A., Masukujjaman, M., Rahman, M. K., Gao, J., & Yang, Q. (2023). Modelling the significance of organizational conditions on quiet quitting intention among GenZ workforce in an emerging economy. Scientific Reports, 13: 15438-15467.

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06
Oct 22

Job Satisfaction Case Study: Me

What is the foundational piece to employment? Depending on who you ask, you may get a different answer. Across the board, most people can agree that job satisfaction is very important, if not the most important element to work. Job satisfaction though, is quite complicated and many factors contribute to it.

The first contributing element to job satisfaction are job characteristics. According to Fried and Ferris (1987 as cited in Gruman et al., 2016), five elements contribute to job characteristics. The following list is ordered by most important to least important elements.

  1. Autonomy (control over how to conduct job)
  2. Skill variety (performing variety of tasks)
  3. Job feedback (feedback about effectiveness of work)
  4. Task significance (work is seen as important)
  5. Task identity (can see work from beginning to end)

One may think that if a few of these important elements are lacking, an individual may not like their job. Well, other elements contribute to job satisfaction as well, such as social/organizational factors and personal dispositions.

Social and organizational factors include how much social influence one has at their job, supervisor/employee relationship, promotion opportunities and equitable rewards for work accomplished. Personal dispositions include one’s self-esteem, locus of control, and emotional stability.

Now that job satisfaction has been thoroughly defined, let’s take a case study. Recently, I started a job at a new company. Overall, I’m not feeling very satisfied. This model can help me determine what could be improved in my job satisfaction.

I begin my job assessment by evaluating the job characteristics of my new role. I have what feels like little autonomy on how to conduct my job. I am forced to come into the office 40 hours per week, which is unnecessary for my role. Although autonomy is expected to have a 34% correlational effect for global job satisfaction, I have a painful childhood history of autonomy being taken away from me, so my need for autonomy may be higher than the average individual. It is safe to say this is more than a 34% ding to my job dissatisfaction. I don’t perform a variety of tasks. I almost solely focus on creating a database for clinical work. I do receive feedback frequently, which is important to me. I believe my work is seen as important on my team. In fact, the NIH forces teams to hire Database Managers (my role) as a paid position because of how important the work is. Overall, I’d say I feel slightly bad about my job characteristics.

I have a lot of influence on my job, since I am well-experienced in what I do and no one else on my team is. My relationship with my manager is okay for the most part, other than the WFH conflict, and we talk about future promotions. My social and organizational factors make me mediocrely happy. Personally, I have decent self-esteem. I know I can perform the work being expected of me if I put in the time. I have a external locus of control, so the fact that I cannot work from home is very much bothersome to me. It feels like there’s little I can do to change this situation. I am quite emotional. My personal disposition may be hindering my happiness.

Overall, I seem to have job characteristics that don’t make me happy, moderate social and organizational factors, and a sensitive personal disposition, making my overall job satisfaction not very high in my new role. It is helpful to look at the contributing factors so that small improvements can be made to create a better experience.

References

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.

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14
Oct 19

Looking for a Job?

I’m almost positive without research being done, (which is a big no no in my future field to assume, however, I’m going to anyway) that a majority of working individuals have hated at least one job they’ve had. In my own case, I’ve hated about half of every job I’ve ever had. I have worked with children the majority of my life. I love my first job and I was lucky to be there from teenage years up until adulthood. Of course, there were aspects of it I didn’t like such as waking up at the crack of dawn or rude parents, but I loved the environment and the students.
There were many reasons I didn’t like coming to work at other places of employment I had. The majority had to do with leadership. I’ve had hostile managers, that I felt like loved to berate me. I’ve had supervisors that wouldn’t support the team but will take credit for the accomplishments of the group. I also had supervisors that had no idea what they were doing.
One way to avoid those unfortunate environments is to find something you enjoy. Job satisfaction is an important factor in whether or not you’ll stay at a particular place of employment. Job satisfaction according to Gruman, “can be defined as a person’s attitude toward his or her overall job as well as toward various aspects of the job; it is a predisposition to respond to one’s work environment in a favorable or unfavorable manner.” In other words, it is the ways to determine what causes you to like your job.
When it comes to looking for a job you can gather if the work will be mentally challenging from the ad a company puts out for the position. Equitable rewards are usually noticed after working there and sometimes is labeled in the company’s benefits policy which most find out in great detail after being hired. Supportive working conditions and supportive colleagues is what you can figure out before you accept the position by asking some key questions in the interview. You can also get more information about the work’s challenges in the interview as well. Asking these questions could help with your own person-job fit model. The person-job fit model argues that job satisfaction will be higher when there’s a pretty good matchup between your personal characteristics and the nature of the job (Gruman, 2017). The key is to not be too intrusive. Make these question flow into the interview like conversations as to not put off your future employer.
Asking what the companies’ values or mission statement is very important. This let’s you know what environment you will be entering into. A related question is what is the office culture like? These answers will let you know if this organization is something you want to run away from depending on your personality. An eclectic artist would not want to work in an environment where the culture is very strict in appearance and conversation and the organizational values reflect a cutthroat mentality where individuals steal ideas in order to gain success. It’s important to ask upfront instead of finding out later.
To find out more about supportive working conditions, asking about a learning development program or about training will let you know if they support employees learning more. This could also clue you in about how the company supports growth. If you’re the type of person with high growth need strength which can be explained by your job contributing to your personal growth and development, it’s especially important to ask this question.
One question I have learned to ask an interviewer which gives insight to supportive colleagues is “What do you like best about working for this organization?” This would give information on how colleagues support each other when things go wrong. Social influence at work can affect job satisfaction. The answer to this question derives specifically from their social environment at work. Beware when an interviewer gives vague answers and doesn’t answer with some slight enthusiasm. It probably means you should definitely run for the hills.
These are things I wished someone told me once I got into the workforce full time. I would’ve avoided some very unhealthy environments. Please remember, that you add value to your organization by being there. You do have to accomplish getting their attention with impressing them in order for them to offer you the job, but they need to impress you as well. After all you’ll spend the majority of your days working there.

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23
Feb 18

Group Satisfaction In the Workplace

Workplaces can offer an amazing amount of resources and examples of human behavior, on an individual level and as a group.  Workplaces are unique in the fact that they bring a multitude of people together, who all have a wide range of interests and beliefs, and requires them to interact together.  This also makes for plenty of examples for looking at how organizations act.

Currently I work as a helicopter mechanic, and with me particular, I have been there the longest and seen a lot of changes in the organizational environment.  Throughout the decade plus that I have been working at this facility I have easily seen or experienced most aspects, both good and bad, that could be experienced in an organization.  In particular, the last two years, to say the least, has been a rollercoaster of an experience.

Up until two years ago everyone on the crew that I work on got along great.  Job satisfaction, the attitude that person has towards their job and other aspects of it (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012) was very high.  Why?  Because we all loved our job.  For almost a decade our crew was the only one at the facility that worked on the AH-64 Apache airframe, a matter of pride for our crew.  Everyone worked together well and got along great, interpersonal relationships were smooth, and people’s job performance was excellent.  It wasn’t to last, however, as we received notice that the Active Duty was taking all the Apache airframes from National Guard assets.  As a result, our future at the facility was unknown.

As it turns out, we weren’t the only ones who were uncertain of our future.  After the last Apache left two years ago the leadership was faced with a whole crew of people with nothing to do.  Little guidance was given as to what would become of us, would we stay together as a crew? Strong friendships had developed over the years and we worked well together.  Would we be forced to take a demotion?  Would we have a choice on where we went, if split up? These and many more questions went unanswered.  For almost two years our crew “floated” around, showing up to work just to be assigned random jobs that no one else wanted.  Conflicts developed, sick and vacation time was abused, showing up on time became almost an option.

The behavior throughout this time has been interesting to observe, with a wide range of behaviors occurring that affected the organization of our crew.  Disengagement, or withdrawal, was common.  As mentioned, people often showed up late, left early, or took whole days off when they normally wouldn’t.  Others would show up but not engage in the work that was assigned and going above and beyond, something common before, was nonexistent.  When faced with a task that they may not like or appreciated, withdrawal behavior is common and is something that must be countered (Schneider, et. al, 2012).  Job satisfaction and moral was at an all-time low, but there would be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Did we receive the Apaches back? Nope.  We were, eventually, given a set of shiny new UH-60 Blackhawks to take care of, however, while the other crews kept their older models.  That improved moral a bit.  In the coming weeks and months conflict among our crew has almost disappeared.  We have been working together as we used to, having a common goal and sense of pride, with an increase in moral.

Since the acquisition of our own aircraft, however, the main characteristics of job satisfaction are being displayed, skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and job feedback (Schneider, et. al, 2012).  We all feel that what we are being engaged in the variety of tasks that we are best suited for, not just doing the scut work of others, but actually taking care of our own equipment.  Our performance directly impacts the flight schedule, influencing task identity and significance.  Being assigned our own aircraft has improved autonomy and the better we work the more positive feedback we have received.

There was more that the leadership could’ve done throughout this transition period.  Kept us more informed, provided better engagement through the assigning of aircraft to our crew to instill responsibility, or even just took the time to sit down with us.  Only once, in the beginning, were we ever brought together and our future was discussed, and even then, answers weren’t forthcoming.  The lack of leadership provided little motivation or opportunity to achieve the characteristics of job satisfaction.  In the end, however, things seemed to have worked out, and I look forward to what the future holds.

 

References:

 

Schneider, F.W, Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012).  Applied Psychology (2nd ed.).  Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

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09
Oct 15

Job Satisfaction – Perks or Work?

Many things are involved in a person’s decision to stay with or leave a company.  From financial compensation and benefits, to the general office environment, the balance of such things all come together as a package deal. Based on the individual’s perception, this package may be portrayed as satisfactory, resulting in a desirable place to work, or one that warrants the employee to find the nearest exit.  It all hinges on what the individual needs and what setting provides the ideal environment.  In this week’s reading, job satisfaction and different characteristics were reviewed in relation to what provides a favorable employment setting.  Reflecting on my own transitions, I thought about the various positions that caused me to resign and found that many of them did not center on financial reasons.  It was simply a lack of job satisfaction and the environment not fitting in with what I needed.

Although the declarative statement “show me the money,” may motivate many people to leave one position for another, it is not always the primary motivation to seek employment elsewhere.  Job satisfaction, by definition, expresses an individual’s opinion of the job, various responsibilities and work environment, in a favorable or unfavorable way (Schneider et al., 2012, p. 225).  This means the actual job functions, policies and procedures, hours, benefits, wages, the management team, supervisors, co-workers, and clients all play a part in the overall determination of a positive or negative experience.  Regardless of whether the organization is small or large, these components only vary to one degree or another, but they are all integral to the work environment.

I can recall one position with an international law firm that seemed to have it all. Glassdoor and Indeed had rave reviews from former and current employees, the benefits were amazing, and the opportunity seemed to be just the right fit for me.  I was thrilled when they called me in for an interview and then followed up with a second to make a decision.  I was impressed with the HR team and my potential supervisor (who interviewed me by telepresence) and the overall feeling of the firm. Since I did my homework on the company and knew of its reputation and benefits, I was over-the-moon to receive an offer and start my journey in the “dream job.”  With a significant increase in salary, I felt that I was on my way and I thoroughly enjoyed my first month there.  After the first month, however, I started to notice that I wasn’t doing much training and I was practically begging for work to do.  Here I am, a new employee “revving” to go, but no work to actually perform.  To burn time, I played with the accounting systems, printed out reports and poured over them to learn coding, allocations, etc., took free courses using the firm’s training center,  created pretty spreadsheets and pivotal tables for simple tasks – needless to say I was bored out of my mind.  Coming from a company that was extremely fast-paced to one that seemed to take the scenic route was not a “dream” position for me.

Despite the amazing perks, no amount of free games, club-level seating, travel, or parties could make me overlook the most important aspect that was lacking to me – actual work.  I was absolutely miserable and felt worse as time went on. For me, it wasn’t the people or the benefits that contributed to this feeling, it was simply underusing my skills and abilities.  After spending a little over a year with the firm and seeing that the dynamic would not change, I decided to seek employment elsewhere and made sure I would be challenged and have the capability to grow when I accepted the new offer. Of course, making such a move was a risk.  After all, the new company could have been just as bad or worse in other areas.  Fortunately, however, I did not see the negative side and the decision made was the best one for me.  Hackman and Oldham (as cited in Schneider et al., 2012) called this growth need strength, which describes the desired contribution a position can make to the individual’s own growth and development (p. 227).  This becomes abundantly clear in my case, I needed to be challenged and grow in the position, but the company did not offer this.  Therefore, the position was vacated and a new one was sought in its place.

The work environment is very unique and plays a major part in job satisfaction.  For some like me, it is not enough to have just the benefits and the company perks, the position itself must offer the challenges and growth potential desired as well.  Since an investment of 40 hours or more is spent working in such environments, I choose to use the time to learn, grow, and be satisfied while doing so.

 

Reference:

Schneider, F., Gruman, J., & Coutts, L. (Eds.). (2012). Applied social psychology: understanding and addressing social and practical problems (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage.

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13
Oct 14

Culture in the Workplace

Individuals are complicated.  Varying personal experiences, beliefs, biases, etc., all shape each individual and their social perception (Schneider, Gruman, Coutts, 2012).  That is, how one sees themselves and others is quite subjective.  In order to make sense of others, individuals may group ideas together to form schemas, generalize others based on a single characteristic, or favor those who are similar to themselves (similar-to-me) effect (Schneider, et al., 2012).  Organizations face the problem of attempting to alleviate the problems that can arise from having a myriad of personal biases and perceptions working together.

Just that individuals form perceptions about one another, they also possess varying perceptions of organizations and all of its parts.  From fellow co-workers to job duties, opportunities for development and perhaps most importantly, job satisfaction (Schneider, et al., 2012).  Two methods used by organizations to measure job satisfaction are the global approach and the facet approach -both of which require input from employees via questionnaires (Schneider, et al., 2012).

Culture is one area of job satisfaction that has been changing the workplace.  According to Schneider, et al. (2012) ‘Social influence processes also affect one’s level of job satisfaction. For example, the social information processing model of job satisfaction (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978) is based on the premise that people “ adapt attitudes, behavior, and beliefs to their social context and to the reality of their own past and present behavior and situation” (p. 226)’.  Organizations have been embracing this idea by implementing policies to create an employee favorable atmosphere in the workplace.

Sophie Brown’s recent CNN article titled, “Can disappearing desks improve how we work?” illustrates several companies who are making strides at creating their unique culture.  For example, a Netherlands design studio designed their communal desks with the ability to retract (computers and all) up into the ceiling, allowing for other activities such as yoga to occur in its place.  “’We think that doing activities like this makes it easier for people to work here,” Vincent Stolk, a junior art director at the company, told CNN by email’.

Volkswagen began restricting e-mail to off duty employees and a French technology company has shifted towards removing e-mail use altogether! (Brown, 2014).

Some companies in Asia are making the workplace more fun by including things like miniature golf courses and beds -similar to the approach that major technology companies in the United States has implemented. (Brown, 2014).

While it may be impossible to please every single employee within an organization due to the variety of perspectives, it may be possible to attract individuals who favor the culture that it has created.  Companies are now attempting to find their own culture from which it can cultivate like-minded employees.  Maybe there is hope for pleasing everyone yet?

References

Brown, S. (2014, October 13). Can disappearing desks improve how we work? Retrieved October 13, 2014, from http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/12/business/transformer-office-no-more-long-work-hours/

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

 

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