Why Your Employees are Practicing Quiet Quitting


quiet quitting

The new buzz word among small business owners and team members is “quiet quitting”; that is people that only do the minimal at work to keep their job, instead of resigning.

On The Small Business Radio Show, I discussed this problem with Mark DiMassimo, the Founder and Creative Chief of DiGo (DiMassimo Goldstein), the industry-leading agency in Positive Behavior Change marketing, which he founded in 1996 in New York City.

Mark says that “quiet quitting is a mental health crisis; it’s a leadership and engagement phenomenon supported by social media; if you are disconnected from the mission of your company and you are feeling distracted, there is support on social media to only do the letter of your job.”

Mark believes that if companies don’t set boundaries between personal and business time, employees feel that their mental health and family lives are at risk. The company that just focuses on getting results instead keeping employees healthy to do a good job will be penalized by quiet quitting. Employees want to strike back as it becomes an adversarial relationship.

Small business owners need to decide which employees to invest in. Mark believes you can identify high and low accountability employees by what they focus on: high accountability employee may have complaints, but they are focused on doing their job better. “Low accountability employees just want things like a rice cooker in the break room!”

Mark thinks that the solutions start with focusing on high accountability employee engagement. It begins with picking people that share the values of the company. They will be excited to be  working at your company. Then, in their first week, onboard them so they feel the connection to the team. “The guideline should be to have your team – Start, Stick, Stay! Its an ongoing process.”

Listen to the entire interview on The Small Business Radio Show.

Image: Depositphotos

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Small Business Radio Show As a small business expert, Barry Moltz gets owners growing again by unlocking their long forgotten potential. With decades of entrepreneurial experience in his own business ventures as well as consulting countless other entrepreneurs, Barry has discovered the formula to get stuck business owners unstuck and marching forward. As a small business expert, Barry applies simple, strategic steps to facilitate change.

2 Reactions
  1. Honestly, the “quiet quitting” trend is a perfect illustration of the way employee/employer incentives are structured. Unless the employee has some incentive to exceed expectations, then they’re behaving rationally when they do only the minimum to not get fired.

  2. Mark DiMassimo has no idea what he’s talking about. Quiet quitting is a response to employers refusing to invest in their people. If you don’t take care of your people, you cannot reasonably expect them to take care of you.