“Quiet Quitting”, “Soft Quitting” – feel free to ignore the latest buzz term but don’t ignore what might be happening in your business

January 28, 2025


The danger of buzz words and phrases is that, for many people, they induce a negative reaction from a rolling of the eyes all the way up to visceral body pains. And this negative reaction can understandably lead a person not to engage with the topic.

However, given the importance of an engaged workforce to productivity and success, this really isn’t an area where reluctance (or worse complacency) should exist.

Below are two things that we think every business could be doing in order to better manage their workforce.

1. Talking to (the right) people

This may sound obvious but as a leader or manager in your business, how many times in a week, month, quarter do you spend time directly interacting with the people in your business. Even if you have a high number of interactions, are they being conducted in a way that means what you get back is actually what you need to hear?

Frequently, time with “the boss” is organised and within agreed channels, settings like this usually produce anodyne responses – especially if people need to speak up in front of others.

Effective leaders find ways to have small meaningful conversations directly with people who are living the company experience and who, if treated with respect, will give their honest opinion (as they see it admittedly) about what is happening.

2. Systematically reward loyalty

It is our increasing observation that staff who remain within a role for a long time will often fall behind their peers in terms of salary because their annual salary reviews, whilst reflecting inflation perhaps, may not have fully taken into account what is happening in the market for a specific role.

Whilst, as an employer, it can be tempting to let this “fiscal drag” keep happening for as long as possible from a cost saving perspective, the ultimate outcome of this is that the business is not in ultimately in control of its future wage structure. In particular, by not managing the situation actively, the time when it does need to be managed will be dictated by others. This means that the company may not be in the optimum position to negotiate and/or afford the increase in costs and may lose a valuable employee as a result.

This is all before considering whether taking the company’s approach to loyal employees meets or undermines its business values.

If the above matters resonate and you would like to discuss how MM&K could assist you with developing your approaches in these areas – please contact Stuart James (stuart.james@mm-k.com) in the first instance.

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