THE MORNING RANT – Quiet Quitters To Corporate Execs: “We Learned It By Watching You”

The term “quiet quitting” has been flying around a lot recently. This Washington Post story argues that what employees are quitting is the notion of going above and beyond.

‘Quiet quitting’ isn’t really about quitting. Here are the signs. [WaPo – 8/21/2022]

The term is a bit of a misnomer, because quiet quitters aren’t walking away from their jobs. Instead they’re renouncing hustle culture, quitting “the idea of going above and beyond at work,”

There have always been employees who do the bare minimum required of them at their jobs. They lack passion, loyalty, or a desire to advance in the company. In my younger days we would say that an employee like that was “mailing it in.”

In response to the quiet quitting concept, many people are saying it is simply an updated term for slackers who mail it in. I’m not so sure about that.

I have seen the “quiet quitting” trend among several highly motivated people in my professional circles, especially those who work for major corporations. These are people who have unflinchingly worked late and on weekends throughout their careers, proudly buying their company’s products, and evangelizing on behalf of their employer. At least they used to.

From one of these employees who is “throttling back,” and who is suddenly content to remain behind in her tasks rather than work overtime to catch up, came this line, “I am remaining just as loyal to this company as our executives are.”

For decades, if you were to ask the employees of major corporations what the company’s primary objectives were, you would likely hear some combination of profitability / product quality / service excellence / growth / employee development / product innovation / etc.

But nowadays, if you were to inquire which issues the executives are most focused on, and which consume a disproportionate amount of employees’ time, you’d likely hear some (or maybe all) of the following:

• The Merger / Acquisition / Sale of the Business
• The Software Conversion
• Diversity Equity Inclusion / Environmental Social Governance
• The Reorganization
• The Name Change / Rebranding / Social Media Campaign
• The Management Fad / Motivational Gimmick

Once upon a time, the corporate CEO was likely to be a guy who bled loyalty to the company, having worked his way up through the ranks. Now he is likely to be as loyal to your company as a free agent is to your baseball team. A typical CEO is now a chess player with a bunch of fancy initials after his name. Growing a company is not what these guys were taught in their Ivy League MBA programs. Mergers and Acquisitions is their thing. M&A, all the way.

His next big initiative will likely be an acquisition, or a merger, or best of all, selling the company. There is a huge payday waiting for him if he sells the company, along with a seat at the board of an even bigger company.

What about the employees? Like I said. He’s playing chess. You’re a pawn. All great chess players know that pawns are expendable after they serve their purpose.

If he’s not actually successful in pulling off an M&A, then he’s padding his resume with his leadership of a massive corporate re-organization.

And then there’s the CIO, the most dangerously over-empowered position in corporate America, far removed from the people involved in production, sales, customer service, and doing the actual paperwork. “The software conversion” is the most pressing issue facing the corporation in the CIO’s mind, yet it never ends. The software conversion has become a perpetual process that is never complete.

What is most galling to employees is that the old, user-friendly system is invariably replaced with a more complicated system that will likely have a loss of critical functionality, requiring manual tasks to perform what were mechanized before the conversion “improved” the systems.

But good news! The CIO gets to attend the Super Bowl at the invitation of the software vendor. And even better, he has been engaged to speak at an all-expense paid conference in Bermuda! (Sponsored by the software vendor, of course.)

What is clear to employees is that if the software conversion doesn’t benefit employees, and if it doesn’t benefit customers, it must be benefiting someone – and that someone probably works on the executive floor. It may also be that the software conversion is being done to pave the way for a smooth integration if/when the company is sold.

There is little I can add to the discussion about the social justice horror show going on in corporate America in the name of Diversity-Equity-Inclusion and Environmental Social Governance.

There has been SJW nonsense in corporations for quite a while, but whereas executives used to just pay lip service to social justice, they are now true believers who prioritize ESG over all else. The modern CEO insinuating that his company is infested with bigots who need to be re-educated clearly believes that the people in the trenches doing the actual work of the company are genuine bigots in need of re-education.

When your CEO is slandering you and your co-workers, it affects your loyalty and work ethic.

The modern C-Suites are full of people with agendas other than that of the company’s products, sales, and service. While employees are still busting their tails out of loyalty to their customers and co-workers with whom they have valued relationships, why would they sacrifice their personal lives or go the extra mile out of loyalty to a company led by people who evince no such loyalty.

In other words, if corporate executives want to understand the quiet quitting trend, if they want to understand why employees would rather pursue personal fulfillment over professional loyalty, the response might be “We learned it by watching you.”

(buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com)

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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