Quiet Quitting is Really a Retention Opportunity

I just returned from our drug store without my wife’s prescription because they lost it. She has record that they notified her to pick it up and they have the same record…but it’s gone. Now she’ll wait unhappily for three more days while they re-order it. Gone is not just our prescription but also our faith in that pharmacy because my wife is both medically deprived and also because no one apologized for such a major screw-up.

Service Is Suffering During The Great Resignation

Given the data regarding The Great Resignation, it’s clear that service is worse all over. And that same data makes clear these service snafus will be with us for the long haul.

Then comes this phrase “Quiet Quitters.”, introduced to us by Sona Movsesian who is Conan O’Brien’s assistant.[i] Sona is so proud of her job neglect that she wrote a book about it called The World’s Worst Assistant that is said to be a New York Times bestseller. In a recent interview…yes, Sona is also doing interviews…she said this:

“I realized very early on, I’m just going to be mediocre…and that’s totally fine with me. Most people are mediocre.”

Sona’s slacker pride comes at a good time for her fellow slackers across our country because replacements are so hard to find that the number of workers getting fired is at an all-time low.[ii]

Quiet Quitting and The Great Resignation

So what to do if you are managing our now ex-drugstore that loses prescriptions where no employees seem to care?

1. Coach them, coach them, then coach them some more
2. Treat them gently knowing how hard it is to replace them
3. Counsel them once, maybe twice, then fire them the next time

The correct answer can only be C because if you let one employee slide, peer employees will also slide while the best ones will quit. I wrote about this several months ago and it appears nothing much has changed. Maybe Sona is right that most people are mediocre.

But then, maybe she’s not right at all. Employee accountability is a wonderful thing because it is the bedrock of great organizations. The reason why Chick-fil-A® employees say “my pleasure” is so they don’t say “no problem”, differentiating them from their peers at McDonald’s. And hearing them say “my pleasure” is as consistent as the beat of a drum because their manager holds them accountable for saying it.

Can We Overcome Quiet Quitting Ennui?

I’m convinced that only those CEOs who fully understand the causes, depths, and projected lifespan of The Great Resignation can truly understand there will be winning and losing companies as a result. While journalists write about inflation, supply chain woes and a potential recession, only the sharpest economists know that our national workforce shortage is the genesis of them all. Two contributing pre-pandemic trends have been staring us in the face for a long time, that our birthrate has been plummeting for 70 years and young workers are far less loyal than the baby boomers they replace. Then the pandemic tossed in millions of early retirees, parents staying home with kids, and one million-plus non-expected COVID deaths. This chart will pop your eyes open regarding our nation’s declining birthrate:[iii]

If not for immigration we would be Japan, living with a declining population and a similarly declining economy.[iv]

Few, too, understand how many former corporate employees chose entrepreneurship in the face of pandemic layoffs and subsequently rethinking one’s priorities. This chart shows the incredible increase in business licenses once the pandemic hit:

And many work-for-yourself jobs don’t require a license, with just one example being the 4 million-plus Uber and Lyft drivers who seem to be pleased with non-corporate jobs.

Quiet Quitters = Retention Opportunity for Best Workers

In the face of The Great Resignation, nothing matters more than retaining your best and even good workers.

“Nothing matters more” covers a lot of ground. But I can’t think of one thing businesses do…customer service, product development, increasing sales, etc…that actually matters more than retaining workers. A recent study of HR professionals reveals that the top assignment from the CEO list is improving retention. And retention is not only the solution to keeping good workers but also to reducing the number of open jobs.

Stay Interviews as part of a comprehensive retention solution puts direct supervisors in the driver’s seat by addressing each employee as individuals and as people who can build trust, whether they are “mediocre” or not. Is it hard to counsel and work to retain Quiet Quitters? Absolutely. But if you don’t, you’ll be surrounded by them, and your company will fail.Building trust with employees and having direct managers accountable for that retention is a good way to overcome lamenting the Quiet Quitters to focus on the opportunity to keep your best workers.

Need help establishing retention goals based on manager accountability to retain your top employees? Schedule a conversation with me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and we’ll discuss the numbers and needs you should have to evaluate your retention goals. We work with companies in every type of industry to cut turnover by 20% and more by building trust and accountabilities.

This updated blog was originally published September 22, 2022.

[i] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/conan-o-brien-s-assistant-who-s-quiet-quit-her-job-for-over-a-decade-says-it-s-okay-to-be-mediocre-and-find-ways-to-do-the-minimal-amount-of-work-possible/ar-AA11oUXH?cvid=96ddc06886b84d61ab9f1587deef8f80

[ii] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost

[iii] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6901a5.htm

[iv] https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3188348/japans-population-drops-most-9-years-number-over-65s-hits