Quiet Quitting: What You Need to Know
Quiet quitting refers to employees who are disengaged from their jobs and their employers, but don’t take any formal steps toward leaving the company. They may be unhappy with the work environment or their superiors, or they may just be in a rut. Either way, they’ve decided that rather than leaving, they’ll stay in their current position, but only put in minimal effort. They no longer have any motivation to perform positively for the organization.
Good managers want their employees to be happy and engaged. They want them to feel like they’re making a difference and that their work matters. But sometimes, even when the manager does everything right, employees still don’t feel motivated or fulfilled. So employees may do the logical thing and slow down or stop working. It can be very frustrating for a manager to try and find out what motivates each employee so that they don’t feel the pull of quiet quitting.
This behavior can also have serious consequences for your company’s productivity and culture. If you are unable to motivate your employees, you may find that your team is slow to complete projects or has trouble getting along with one another. Employees who are unhappy with their work environment often feel less motivated to deliver excellence and this can lead customers to abandon your business due to poor experiences. It can also lead to high turnover rates among employees because others employees end up picking up the slack for the quiet quitters.
DISC Assessments can help you prevent quiet quitting
DISC is a full spectrum assessment that can help employees avoid the urge to quiet quit. You’ll be able to identify the best motivators for the Decisive, Interactive, Stability, and Cautious personality types indicated by DISC. Regular use of this assessment can give HR professionals and managers the insight they need to help employees find their own motivation.
Disc assessments help you not just to know, but to really begin to understand your employees’ motivations. By understanding what motivates them, you can better tailor how you communicate with them or explain why they need to do something. You’ll also know how much effort they’ll put into tasks depending on how motivated they are by the reward at stake (and whether there’s any alternative reward).
For example, let’s say one of your employees likes structure and routine but isn’t particularly interested in making money. For them, it might make sense for them to work harder when there’s an opportunity for career advancement or more autonomy at work. This is because these things matter more to them than the paycheck itself does. By knowing what motivates them, you may be able to adjust their rewards so that performance is once again aligned with their authentic motivations.
You can look beyond the surface with regular DISC Assessments
DISC Assessment makes this kind of personalized attention possible by providing a baseline approach to motivation for each worker.
It is important to remember that when employees are not motivated, it’s rarely because they don’t want to do a good job or have given up entirely on the company. Instead, they may be struggling to find ways to enjoy their work, and align their values with the goals of the organization.
The first step to understanding these employees is to listen to them. One way you to do that is through regular DISC Assessments that help managers stay aware of the motivators and values of staff. This will help them gain a deeper understanding of what your employee is feeling and how that affects their performance. It will give them more of a sense of the pulse of their team, long before quiet quitting sets in.
DISC tests can help managers understand issues like procrastination by indicating reasons why a person may be putting things off. It may help managers evaluate the amount of structure around an employee, to determine whether less or more structure might help. It could help managers decide whether to add more operating procedures for one employee while asking another employee to develop their own processes.
The time to motivate is now
Time lost to quiet quitting is costly in many ways because of low production rates, wasted time, and lost opportunities. The time to help workers find motivation is now rather than later because every day that employees are not working is a day lost. The DISC is a way to be proactive and get ahead of quiet quitting, or to respond where it may already have started.
When you use DISC assessments to get to know your employees better and motivate them more appropriately, quiet quitting will be less of an issue. It’s a win-win situation—you get the help that you need and your employees are happy because they feel valued.
Your organization does not have to be vulnerable to quiet quitting anymore. Using DISC Assessments can build a strong foundation that will help you motivate employees in ways that actually have an impact, and move them from quiet quitters to confident contributors.
