YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
Are you being quietly fired?
That was the question posed in a recent news release from Selena Rezvani, author of the forthcoming book “Quick Leadership: Build Trust, Navigate Change and Cultivate Unstoppable Teams.”
Quiet firing, Rezvani said, happens when businesses push employees out by cutting hours, stalling promotions or removing opportunities. She called it the flip side of quiet quitting – when employees contribute the bare minimum of time, effort or interest to their jobs, often as a precursor to leaving them.
A May survey by ResumeTemplates found that out of more than 1,100 business leaders surveyed, 42% used the tactic this year – and another 11% plan to do so before the year is through. The leaders cited a desire to avoid severance, legal and other costs while also avoiding the kind of bad blood firing can engender.
Noting a trend with a similar name – quiet vacationing – a news release from Resume Builder cited July survey results from 1,200 full-time U.S. workers. It showed that 41% of them had taken a quiet vacation this year – that is, they took time off without officially requesting it, some by pretending to work and others by sneaking out with a fake excuse.
Stacie Haller, chief career adviser with Resume Builder, said the behavior is nothing new – employees have always called in sick when in fact they felt fine. But she said younger workers prize work-life balance more than generations that came before them, with 66% of Gen Z workers admitting to taking time off without notifying their employer.
“There’s a reason they do it quietly rather than taking their vacation,” Haller said. “They don’t want to look like somebody who’s not doing their job.”
By the way, Gen Z isn’t the only group quietly vacationing. The same survey showed a similar percentage of executives – 65% – doing the very same thing.
And there’s another trend: Office software company TalentLMS released a report showing one in five employees say they are mired in workplace unhappiness – a condition they dubbed quiet cracking.
‘Quiet part’ is core problem
The common bond, of course, is all the tiptoeing. Why are workers so quiet when it comes to their lives at the office?
“Maybe the quiet part is the core problem,” said Don Harkey, founder of People Centric Consulting Group LLC, a Springfield business management consulting firm. “Maybe if we did talk more, we wouldn’t have to worry about all those other things.”
Harkey said organizations know the importance of communication, though they don’t always practice it. He added that some managers may undergo some training in having difficult conversations, but they avoid them anyway, and some employees, especially younger ones, come in with the mindset that they are not going to do things that make them uncomfortable.
“It’s OK to take some time off and take care of yourself, but why is it quiet?” he said. “Why can’t I go to my supervisor and say, ‘I need a minute.’”
Harkey said if employees can’t talk about how they’re feeling, the result will be worse relationships across the board.
“From the employer side, we need to train managers, supervisors, directors and executives to have difficult conversations, and then we need to systematize those conversations,” he said.
Harvard Business Review statistics show 69% of managers are afraid of talking to their employees about anything, Harkey said.
“If you systematize it, how often should a manager give feedback to an employee about performance? The answer is constantly,” he said.
Harkey said in a healthy business, at least once a quarter, every manager should sit down with every employee and ask how things are going, as well as what’s going well.
“You have to dig your well before you need it,” he said. “It’s a big opportunity for managers and executives to have regular personal conversations with employees where they don’t know what the outcome is, to ask questions where they may not like the answer.”
He added that younger employees should be encouraged to engage in conversations.
“Just because it’s uncomfortable for you doesn’t mean it’s not good for you,” he said.
Communication saves time
Ron Bogart, CEO of building systems service provider Gold Mechanical Inc., noted that conversation can be a remarkably good time hack.
Gold Mechanical is a frequent honoree in SBJ’s Dynamic Dozen awards for fastest-growing companies in the region, and Bogart credits its employee-owners with getting them there. In return, Gold Mechanical offers guaranteed regular raises, plus an extra paycheck each quarter when the company hits its budget target.
Prioritizing employees pays off for the company, according to Bogart, and in turn it makes employees prioritize the work they do, as well as those they do it with.
“There are a lot of passive-aggressive people in this world,” Bogart said. “When you really think about it, that’s what this quiet thing is. People are aggressively seeking their own piece, but the passive part is they’re not telling anybody.”
Bogart said he gets it – after all, it’s an easier route to take.
“Having critical and crucial conversations with people can be exhausting,” he said.
Bogart said straightforward conversations can save a lot of time. He gave the example of his wife, Nancy Bogart, founder and CEO of skincare company Jordan Essentials.
A manager at the company had spent hours having conversations with an employee who was not working out, he said. But then Nancy sat down with her and had a quick discussion that was compassionate, caring and clear, and afterward, the problem was fixed.
“If you do the right thing, in 12 minutes you can take care of this stuff,” he said.
Engagement through communication
Marsha Ballard, executive director of nursing at Mercy Springfield Communities, said communication is key for Mercy employees.
“We’re a large organization, so it is important for us to continue to find a lot of ways to communicate with our teams,” she said. “One of the nuts we’ve been able to crack a little bit is to really figure out and find what communication style or form really works best for each of our caregivers.”
Ballard said burnout – which can cause people to check out of the workplace, at least emotionally – often comes down to disengagement.
“It isn’t about how hard we work or our work-life balance,” she said. “The challenge is that we lose engagement with the work that we’re doing.”
It’s also possible to lose trust in the idea that leaders want the best for employees, Ballard said.
Communication can solve the problem, she said.
“Core to our operations is that we do have a lot of connection points throughout the day,” she said.
At the start of each shift, employees have a department huddle, noting what they expect to see, any challenges they anticipate and anything fellow workers need to know, from a shortage of supplies to a piece of nonworking equipment.
They also learn about staffing challenges and plans to address them, she said.
At the same time, leaders can remind staff about flu shots, surveys or other organizational priorities.
Ballard said patients are a caregiver’s purpose, but for her, nurses are the priority.
“They want to take care of patients and want to do it well; let’s provide every opportunity for them to do that,” she said.
Nursing leaders have regular conversations with employees – something Ballard calls essential to grounding. Enhancing conversational efforts further are meetings among nurse managers to talk about larger-scale issues and hospital-wide initiatives.
Rounding out the picture, Ballard said it’s important to offer support for workers who are undergoing stress, from difficulties at home to the loss of longtime patients. Additionally, she said, it helps to empower employees to make decisions. An example might be a staffing shortage, where charge nurses can come together to temporarily reassign a nurse or a tech to cover it.
“Or we walk away saying, ‘We’re all a little short, but this is how it is throughout,’” she said. “It helps everyone to have a stake in decision-making for those resources.”
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