If you are a leader in a company then you have employees quietly quitting.
Gallup released their State of the Global Workforce 2023, showing that 59% of the global workforce is quiet quitting (17% are load quitting).
In the United States and Canada, 52% of the workforce is quietly quitting. Yikes! That’s over half of your company.
To add to the concern, 1 in 2 employees are watching for or actively seeking a new job. And engagement, while higher globally, dropped 2% for the United States and Canada.
So if you’ve been thinking up until now that you do not have a quiet quitting problem, this data should have you thinking twice about that. What are the chances that your company or department is the outlier?
BUT there is good news!
The report also shows that the #1 thing leaders need fix to decrease quiet quitting . . .COMPANY CULTURE.
What Employees Want in a Company Culture
While pay and benefits are still making the top three desires of employees globally, it doesn’t compare to the 41% of employees who say that changing company culture will have the biggest impact.
Culture change isn’t easy but Gallup’s data provides the actionable insights for leaders and managers to start creating more engaged employees.
- Everyone get’s recognized equally for their contribution. It’s hard to work for a company that celebrates the accomplishments of some and not others. When you work hard and then feel like it doesn’t matter as much as someone else’s contribution it’s challenging to feel like giving more than the bare minimum.
- Clearer goals and guidance. I’ve heard it time and again, managers bemoaning “why can everyone just do their job.” Maybe it’s because they are unclear on what they are supposed to be accomplishing beyond a simple job description. Ensuring your employees have attainable goals and they understand how they connect to the larger picture is critical. They also need regular check points to ensure they feel confident they are going in the right direction.
- Respectful treatment. Gone are the days of command and control leadership. While research shows that leaders need to be adept at both transactional and transformational leadership, it’s transformational leadership that can make the most difference in employees feeling respected. Transformational leaders give individualized attention and mentoring to employees which requires respectful treatment.
- Learning and growth opportunities. These can come in the form of specific company knowledge that can lead to promotions and general skill building to empower employees to be more efficient and achieve better outcomes. If you are worried that building your employees skills will only hasten their departure, the research shows it’s the opposite.
Taking action on any of the above can start to produce quick wins for employees and increase engagement. However, the quickest and easiest to accomplish is providing learning and growth.
Way to Provide Learning and Growth
Everyone learns differently, so it’s essential to have multiple ways to provide these opportunities. Here are a few ways you can support your employees’ growth and development:
- Projects and delegation. Assigning employees to projects or delegating tasks that require new skill development is a great way to incorporate learning into daily work. The key here is to provide the guidance necessary to assist the employee with developing the required skills. Do NOT leave them on their own to figure it out.
- Start a formal mentoring program. Mentoring isn’t just for entry level or new staff. Every one at every level in the organization can benefit from mentoring. Mentoring can help build confidence in new situations, learn organizational processes, create cross-function collaboration, and build the informal networks that get the work of the company done.
- Provide access to outside learning resources. Sometimes skills building is best done with an outside facilitator. Bringing in workshops with outside expertise puts everyone on the same learning journey instead of it becoming “leader as lecturer.” It also gives your teams the opportunity to bond and practice skills together.
For your company or department to thrive, your employees need to thrive. When employees thrive it increases engagement and decreases quiet quitting.
If you are looking for ways to increase engagement through providing learning and growth, I encourage you to check out my CUSTOM workshops. Provide the skills your employees want in a manner that reinforces the positive culture you are looking to create.
