Quiet hiring, a panaceafor quiet quitting

Karthik (name changed) reported to the office soon after the pandemic restrictions were relaxed. He displayed incredible passion in his job without expecting appreciation or rewards. As he returned to the office, the department was taken over by new managers. Karthik did not have any apprehensions about the change because he never expected any recognition. He was keen on job satisfaction.

However, the managers had their priorities. They started invading the space of Karthik by employing new members. Besides, Karthik was driven through various episodes of contrived lapses. This forced him to walk out voluntarily and gracefully of his passionate ecosystem.

This case prompts one to contemplate various affairs of organisational dynamics:

Was Karthik so vulnerable to the changes after the pandemic?

Did the new managers play the game of gaslighting driving him to quit quietly?

Can quiet hiring be the best strategy to deal with quiet quitting employees?

The pandemic outrage heralded some sophisticated workplace behaviours that were highly vulnerable to ambiguities or inconsistencies prevailing in the organisation. The employees in all levels of management have gone through many mental, emotional, and physiological traumatic experiences during the period.

According to various studies, once employees are back in the office to face the new hybrid workplace reality, their psychological conditions are not the same. Some respond emotionally to the changes, and a few become mentally shrewd due to self-doubt, workplace ambiguities, and job insecurity.

Quiet quitting

The term quiet quitting may not be misunderstood as attrition, but it is the employees’ intention to withdraw from their organisational citizenship or extra-role behaviours due to some heinous mind games at the workplace. According to a famous psychological experiment conducted on dogs in the 1960s in a cage and an electrified platform, humans gradually give up their efforts if they feel that the efforts not producing any results.

A series of dog and cage experiments introduced the concept called Learned Helplessness, which is linked to the present workplace trend of quiet quitting. If employees are constantly exposed to helpless situations in the workplace, they renounce extra-role behaviours and confine only to their job roles.

Martin Seligman, a renowned positive psychologist, conducted the second phase of a psychological experiment like dogs and cages with an electrified platform and proved that employees’ quiet quitting mindset can be reversed through appropriate employee engagement strategies.

Inner and outer circles

The managers tend to promote the concept of an inner circle wherein the limited members are embodied. These members are believed to be the trusted soldiers of the manager. The employees belonging to the outer circle irrespective of their job competencies remain unsung, unnoticed and deprived of recognition. This leads to nepotism and organisational decline. 

According to American Psychological Association, “Gaslighting is emotional or mental abuse to make a person self-doubt his/her ability by creating fictitious episodes in the interpersonal ecosystem.” In the professional eco-space, gaslighting has become a most disgraceful strategy designed to offend employees.

The psychological games of gaslighting not only harm the victims but create an atmosphere of mistrust, volatility, and infertile workplace behaviours. Behavioural scientists opine that managers or organisations must be aware that psychological vulnerability in the workplace does not breed positive workplace behaviours. 

The contemporary business world is changing rapidly, and competition is surging. In this context, organisations cannot afford to play safe by ignoring the existing psychological aberrations against employees. Since competent employees play a crucial role in achieving organisational goals, it is essential to explore the incremental value proposition of employees by nullifying the vicious practices.

Quiet hiring

Quiet hiring is one of the best strategies to draw quiet quitting employees back. It is a contemporary trend in most organisations that helps employees diversify their job skills. Quiet hiring is an organisational strategy that aims to employ diversified skills of employees by minimising the onboarding of new employees.

This strategy is cost-effective but demands a sensible and emotive approach that can nullify implicit factors that undermine employees’ morale and build a culture of openness wherein the employees display diversified talents. Organisations may leverage employees’ willingness to go the extra mile and create a new talent pipeline. The best strategies for quiet hiring may include:

• Diagnose the reasons for quiet quitting and create a sense of belonging.
• Appreciate and reward employees’ organizational citizenship behaviours.
• Zero tolerance towards nepotism or favouritism.
• Encourage and nurture diversified skills of employees that are beyond job skills.
• Build an ecosystem of acceptance and inclusion.
• Define the unbiased and comprehensive career path for each employee.
• Eliminate episodes of intellectual plagiarism (hijacking others’ contributions).
• Liberalising the rigidity of power dynamics between employer and employee.
• Assess the post-pandemic factors that are influencing workplace dynamics. 

The workplace behaviours of employees are not just driven by the job roles. They are a synthesis of values, beliefs, sentiments, and emotions. Any kind of biased infringement into the individual’s workplace dynamics may lead to performance regression. Indeed, the present psyche of the workforce craves to go the extra mile provided there is freedom of expression, display of new job skills, and transparency in workplace affairs.

(The author is a professor of Behavioural Sciences, MAHE, Bengaluru)