70% Of SMBs Note That Quiet Quitting Spiked Since COVID-19: 2022 Study
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As the American economy hurtles towards the end of 2022, one thing economic and workforce analysts can agree on for certain is that they still do not have a full understanding of the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The start of the pandemic was characterized by a breakdown in the economy, while the second half has been characterized by inconsistent recovery and rebuilding, with a focus on new strategic approaches to long-standing business challenges.
While the UpCity team has discussed in depth the potential of an impending recession, the Great Resignation phenomenon, and even the reorganization of marketing strategies to meet the changing needs of consumers, the discussion continues to evolve.
Already struggling with staffing shortages and the ability to meet the needs of their customers, small business owners are now voicing concerns over a perceived decline in efficiency as they point to the fact workers are no longer as willing to perform above and beyond the requirements of their roles.
While not new, the Great Resignation combined with hybrid and remote work arrangements has brought attention to this growing trend in the workforce that the media has dubbed “quiet quitting.” Though related in causation, it’s important to distinguish quiet quitting as a separate phenomenon from the Great Resignation which is more concerned with employee engagement and productivity.
The UpCity team wanted to explore quiet quitting in more detail, including the potential factors that are making it suddenly more prevalent and how employers can mitigate those factors. In conjunction with Pollfish, the UpCity team gathered data from 500 small business owners and human resources subject matter experts. To help our community recognize, address, or even prevent quiet quitting in their teams, we’ve organized survey results and metric analysis into the following discussions:
- Quiet Quitting and the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Quiet Quitting Signs, Causes, and Preventions
In addition to the metric analysis, we’ve also featured the thoughts and guidance of additional small business owners and HR experts themselves to give your leadership a “boots on the ground” perspective of what behaviors are quiet quitting and what those behaviors might indicate about your current staffing practices and standards.
This can be an extremely crucial read for your team, as the discussions in this article provide your team with the best practices and knowledge necessary for laying the framework for your recruiting and retention strategies for 2023.
Quiet Quitting and the Coronavirus Pandemic
57% of small business owners and HR professionals note quiet quitting as a moderate problem in the 2022 workforce
Historically, quiet quitting has taken several forms in the workplace, but in 2022 the term boils down to the fact that employers see employees engaging with each other and with leadership less consistently and a drop off in productivity levels. How this phenomenon is perceived largely depends upon who is talking about it.
The New York Times characterizes quiet quitting as a “softer approach” for employees who might be tired of their jobs and aren’t willing to go above and beyond but aren’t ready to make a grand exit. The Wall Street Journal portrays quiet quitting as a way of staying under the radar and remaining on a payroll but doing as little as possible in the process. In a recent Bloomberg article, it’s suggested that quiet quitting is one of the most worrisome work-trends business owners are facing in the face of a looming recession when a decrease in workplace productivity could mean the difference between remaining in business and closing their doors forever.
The facts on either side of the discussion tell the same story, though, in that everyone agrees that employees are less willing to stay beyond their assigned hours or perform work tasks that don’t fall within the purview of their job descriptions as written. They also are less inclined to take on extra work tasks without a commensurate offer for increased compensation to account for the added workload. This is especially true throughout the Great Resignation when many operations managers are being forced to do more with less rather than being able to reliably hire sufficient staff to meet their business needs.
Leadership and business owners are painting this behavior as a lack of work ethic and a decline in the desire to go above and beyond for the good of the business. On the flip side, employees have found themselves with more negotiating power, giving them the ability to dictate terms around work/life balance and actively taking a stance that supports fair payment standards. Those considered to be quietly quitting are refusing to accept the increased workload they are expected to carry, and thus actively criticizing business owners’ elevation of profit over fair hiring practices focused on sustainability.
Their motivations aside, employees who are quietly quitting and staying in their roles rather than moving on are considered to be doing more harm than if they were to search for new jobs altogether. The entirety of our survey respondents felt that quiet quitting was at the very least a moderate problem.
Business owners provided us with several explanations as to whether they felt quiet quitting is a problem. Their answers provide important insight into the phenomenon and reveal the driving force behind the movement is a gradual shift away from the ingrained hustle culture. This has been complicated in recent years by an increasing reliance by business owners on minimal staffing or poorly defined staffing hierarchies to achieve growth and surpass performance goals.
To dig into some of the reasoning behind how often users were relying upon voice search, we reached out to a wider portion of the consumer population:
“Quiet quitting is not necessarily a new problem in the United States, nor is it likely to the level that we’re led to believe. In truth, people are more stressed in the last two years than they have been in the last ten. Anytime you’re dealing with high levels of stress outside of work, your work is going to reflect that fact. Much of the quiet quitting is likely a result of the majority of people not knowing how to deal with the stress healthily, so they’re essentially shutting down at work.”
—James Green, Owner, Cardboard Cutouts
“I think the real problem is the norm that industries have cultured and nourished that led us to this situation. I even believe that quiet quitting should be the norm, in that you should provide effort in proportion to your paycheck. Employers and organizations are just too accustomed to employees going beyond their job description without regard to their compensation level.”
—Rajesh Namase, Co-Founder and Tech Blogger, TechRT
“Quiet quitting has always been around, but it was largely undiscussed and undefined. Quiet quitting isn’t an issue if employees truly continue to perform the tasks their role requires satisfactorily. Business leaders don’t like it because they want their teams to strive for the top, but if they haven’t designed roles fairly, the fault lies with them, not their staff.”
—Ruben Gamez, Founder and CEO, SignWell
70% of SMBs note that quiet quitting increased since the COVID-19 pandemic started
Two of the primary factors human resources specialists point to that exacerbate quiet quitting are a sense of disconnect from leadership and a lack of engagement. Disconnect and a lack of engagement practically defined the working experience throughout the pandemic, as quarantines and stay-at-home orders forced many businesses to unexpectedly implement remote work arrangements. Having to quickly adapt to Zoom and other software tools to hold regular meetings and perform even the most basic outreach to customers and coworkers left many employees quickly burned out and feeling cut off from normal face-to-face interactions.
Making matters worse, remote arrangements meant that there was significantly less direct oversight of employees’ performance. Leadership was less able to exert pressure to over-deliver and perform above and beyond. The added stress of zero separation between work and life meant that many employees started taking advantage of the fact that they could disengage with work at the exact end of the work day, turning off their computers and communications devices at the close of business rather than feeling the need to complete a task before checking out for the day.
This impression amongst owners in many industries that quiet quitting suddenly spiked due to the work-from-home and flexible work arrangements forced by coronavirus quarantines and lockdown measures is quite widespread. While in the strictest sense this could be considered true, feedback from a range of industries paints a picture that the distance from the office and a lack of constant oversight from leadership revealed behaviors that were already there true, feedback from a range of industries paints a picture that the distance from the office and a lack of constant oversight from leadership revealed behaviors that were already there.
“The pandemic forced employees to stay at home for long periods, which gave them a lot more time to reevaluate their lives and what they consider to be the most important for their overall fulfillment. They also have seen their peers join the Great Resignation that stemmed from the pandemic, which showed them that they too are not stuck in the companies they work for. Employees are now in the driver’s seat and now companies are desperate to prevent the high turnover that is seen in virtually every industry. So these employees are asking themselves, why should they work more and ‘go above and beyond’ for companies that don’t pay them for it?”
—Ethan Drower, Co-Founder and Operating Partner, CiteMed
“The shift to working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic initially caused workers to feel pressured to take phone calls and answer emails at all hours, leading to overwork and stress. However there has been significant pushback since, and workers have gained the confidence to set their work schedules with strict boundaries on when they can and cannot be contacted. Some workers have taken their newfound autonomy further to the extent of quiet quitting.”
—Leanna Serras, Chief Customer Officer, FragranceX
“The pandemic forced many employees to take a long hard look at the companies they work for and how those companies view them. Companies that dragged their heels or fought against worker protections showed their hand that making a statement or trying to maintain a bottom line is more important than the well-being of their employees. When your company has that opinion of you, it’s hard to go above and beyond for them.”
—Jeremy Clifford, CEO, RouterCtrl
39% of respondents feel that all age generations are equally susceptible to quiet quitting
It’s an interesting time in the professional world, with a downturn in economic conditions forcing four different generations to remain actively engaged in the modern workforce. It’s no surprise that respondents point to all generations being susceptible to quiet quitting, but the important thing for business owners and human resource specialists to understand is that each generation comes to quiet quitting from very different paths.
If the market were in a state resembling the pre-pandemic boom, rather than this post-pandemic recovery and borderline recession in which we find ourselves, we would have conditions that would allow Boomers to completely disengage from the active workforce. Many who are well beyond the official retirement age remain engaged with the economy for one financial reason or another.
While as a generation they are more willing to put in the hard work and have the work ethic to do so, quiet quitting means that they are only going through the motions by this point and would rather be anywhere but on the clock. They are also less willing to adopt new technologies, making it difficult for those around them, who end up making up for their inefficiencies as a result.
Generation X, caught between Boomers’ unwillingness to consider the need for work/life balance and Millennials’ radically different take on work ethic, is largely considered the originator of quiet quitting in the workforce. Though the behavior was never called that in the past, early quiet quitting behavior was largely Gen X’s response to the hustle culture perpetuated by Boomers before them that has since come to define the American work experience, despite Gen X’s best efforts to head it off in the 1980s and 1990s.
Just as when Millennials first started pulling a paycheck in the early 2000s, we are seeing seismic shifts in workplace behaviors and employee expectations as Generation Z takes its first steps into becoming working adults. These two generations have practically defined themselves by their insistence on a work/life balance that previous generations either eschewed or failed to achieve and are likely the most high risk for giving in to quiet quitting.
The term quiet quitting has largely become associated with these generations as they struggle to destroy and redefine what workplace success looks like if the focus becomes not on a life built around work, but a working experience designed to give them the freedom to experience the life they want to live.
Gen Z especially are becoming known for their focus on issues surrounding work/life balance, quality of life, and flexible workplace arrangements, a focus that experts are using to frame the argument that while most generations can exhibit quiet quitting, Gen Z is most susceptible to the trend. Gen Z has brought quiet quitting to the frontlines of social media debate with several viral TikTok videos. As the movement has evolved in real-time, over a million viewers to some of the most viral videos have followed along, as Gen Z influencers break down why they are unwilling to commit themselves to a life built around work.
“Younger generations are more susceptible to quiet quitting than older ones. That’s because they prioritize their mental health and well-being and are more aware of the impacts of burnout. So, they prefer not to accustom themselves to constant work-related stress like previous generations.”
—Greg Rozdeba, Co-Founder and President, Dundas Life
“The younger generations, especially Gen Z, are more likely to embrace the concept of quiet quitting. Flexibility and work-life balance are some of the things that this generation prioritizes the most. Quiet quitting is one of Gen Z workers’ responses and ways to combat the hustle culture.”
—April Maccario, Founder, Ask April
50% of small business respondents believe hybrid and in-person employees are equally likely to quiet quit as fully-remote employees
Despite that the pandemic has improved to a point that many businesses have called for a return to the office, many business owners have committed to offering remote work options and hybrid work arrangements. That is a testament to the growing popularity of the model before the pandemic and the need for the modern workforce to evolve with the increasingly flexible needs of employees.
The problem is that the pandemic required many businesses to evolve and embrace remote work arrangements and hybrid arrangements with no time to prepare for it. The pandemic forced a workplace culture shift that many businesses weren’t considering and weren’t equipped to execute or support on a long-term basis. This left many businesses unable to engage with or properly guide their staff through the transition.
The fallout has been a workforce rife with employees who feel abandoned or poorly looked after, and thus less willing to in turn give their best efforts back to the company. Many business owners are willing to view this behavior as the burnout and trauma response to the global crisis event that it is. Others, however, view the decline in productivity associated with quiet quitting as employees taking advantage of the lack of oversight, and see this as an opportunity and justification for a full return to the office and increasing their monitoring of workforce performance.
While many businesses have maintained remote or flexible workplace arrangements, many business owners implemented a return to the office as quickly as they could. Their justification and reasoning for doing so is the impression that working outside of the office has negatively impacted company culture and is a significant factor in the rise of quiet quitting.
“It’s virtually impossible to generate and sustain a culture virtually without the kinds of physical, accidental interactions that remote work does not provide. We need to get much smarter about how to create ‘proxy’ forms of cultural engagement for remote workers that don’t depend on the office-as-destination. There’s some evidence to support the fact that remote workers experience more burnout than others. To combat this, we have to become experts in facilitating true engagement, as only true engagement will extinguish the fire of burnout at its source and prevent those in remote work arrangements from quietly quitting their employers.”
—Rachel Bellow, Co-Founder, Bonfire
“When you work from your home office, it is difficult to establish boundaries between your work and personal life, and as a rule, remote workers are not interested in working overtime. When the workday is over, they just turn off their laptops and are out. But when working in the office you are a part of a team and it encourages you to work harder for better results.”
—Jason Baker, Founder, Emerald House Cleaning
“I think remote and in-person employees can have different frustrations with their working environments, so even though both may engage in quiet quitting, it may look different for each population. For example, post-pandemic, many in-person employees may be unhappy with a mandatory return to the office, which may force them into quiet quitting behaviors. Remote workers might engage in quiet quitting over compensation issues, remote employee monitoring systems, or being expected to work longer hours just because they’re at home.”
—Natalie Fell, HR and Business Specialist, Step by Step Business
No matter your viewpoint as a business owner or human resource professional on quiet quitting, the fact is that it’s happening, and it’s happening across all demographics and workplace arrangements. There is a definite shift that has occurred in the post-pandemic workforce’s willingness to do work above and beyond the requirements of their job description or beyond the hours of operation they were hired to work.
Quiet Quitting Signs, Causes, and Preventions
As a leader or business owner, however, you should be more concerned with how to recognize the behavior in your staff and the underlying causes that might be changing their willingness to hustle for you so that you can identify the necessary changes you need to make in your business approach to improve their buy-in to your business needs.
A majority of respondents said increased absences from work is the most significant indicator of quiet quitting
It’s interesting from the perspective of both employer and employee that the list of indicators employees are quiet quitting is a mix of behaviors that generally fall into one of two categories. Indicators of quiet quitting in some cases could be viewed as careless behaviors and active disengagement from certain activities that are considered requirements in any normal job. For example, employees that don’t show up to meetings or miss realistic deadlines shouldn’t be considered to be acting out or choosing not to engage beyond the requirements of the job, but rather actively defying the tenants of the position.
On the other hand, poor communication or a lack of contributions during meetings could simply be an indicator of either a poor work ethic or a lack of workplace experience. In the wake of COVID-19 quarantines, this could simply be a matter of a challenging return to operations as usual, especially if the employee came aboard during the pandemic and was never able to see what standard operations looked like from within the office walls.
Increased absences at work speak to an employee who is willing to prioritize other needs aside from those of their employer. Throughout the last several years of the pandemic, these absences could have been illness related and intended for either the employee to get better or to allow them to care for a loved one.
Diminishing COVID-19 cases means that the pandemic no longer has as much impact on attendance. Experts are struggling then to explain an uptick in the prevalence of employee absences and point to the fact that this could mean employees are focusing on other priorities, such as a side gig or the needs of family members or friends. It could also indicate a mismatch between the employee’s personal life schedule that has evolved over the last two years and that of the job in which they find themselves now having to perform from the office again.
Employees unconcerned with the needs of their employer, or who feel disengaged due to a lack of sufficient compensation will often be perceived as doing only enough work on a project to turn it in by the deadline or pushing the limits of established deadlines because they are less willing to stay after hours to complete projects as necessary.
This could speak to poor planning on the part of a project team or a skill gap in the employee that requires them to be allotted additional time to complete projects they are assigned outside of their skill set. This can also speak to the fact that many businesses are operating with less staff than needed to meet the workload, and employees are having to rush through projects to meet unrealistic expectations.
Employees who are quiet quitting and checking out from the business tend to care less about established break times, and often push the limits of their established lunch periods or take excessive additional breaks throughout the day. Again, however, this could simply be the lack of oversight in a remote setting for the last several years carrying over into the workplace now that a return to work might be in place.
5.1/ 10
Increase absences from work
5.2/ 10
Incomplete or rushed work
5.3/ 10
Expressed unhappiness with workload and/or compensation
5.4/ 10
Missed deadlines
5.5/ 10
Frequently extended lunch breaks
5.5/ 10
Contributes fewer ideas/feedback
5.5/ 10
Lack of communication among team
5.6/ 10
Less participation in company events
5.7/10
Failure to attend meetings
6/ 10
Doesn’t request performance feedback
Some of our responses from the community revealed that there was a bit of confusion across industries as to what exactly quiet quitting looks like in the post-pandemic era. This is understandable, given that employment and labor reports from as late as July of 2022 still showed the Great Resignation to be in full swing.
While the Great Resignation has been characterized by massive job abandonment with and without sufficient notice being given over the last year, quiet quitting revolves more around perceived reduced performance and poor work ethic relative to the requirements of the job.
“The key signs of quiet quitting are increased disengagement, lack of participation in meetings and/or company activities, missing deadlines or turning work in at the very last minute consistently, and changes in behaviors that lean towards doing less in the workplace.”
—Mike Nemeroff, Co-founder and CEO, Rush Order Tees
“One of the most prominent signs of quiet quitting is a reluctance to engage in extracurricular office activities. People who quit quietly tend to withdraw themselves from any tasks or events outside of their required working hours. This is because quiet quitting is often the result of employees feeling burnt out. So it’s no surprise that an employee who quits quietly will present signs and symptoms similar to that of extreme physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.”
—Stephan Baldwin, Founder and HR Manager, Assisted Living
“One tell-tale sign that an employee may be quiet quitting is when you don’t hear any reports of issues on systems and processes and suggestions on how to improve them. Highly-engaged employees tend to be very observant of how things work in the workplace and they are often the first to spot snags and suggest steps on how to fix them. Being the boots-in-the-ground personnel, it is in their best interest to do so because it makes their work easier and more efficient. Somebody who is just trying to do the bare minimum would not do this. The more likely scenario is that they would just let faulty systems and processes pass as long as they don’t hamper them from meeting their minimum quotas or however their work is measured.”
—Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D., CEO and Global Keynote Speaker, ElizabethLombardo.com
This is of course impacted by supply chain shortages and rising costs of goods, but strong leadership will do what they can to restructure the business to ensure employees are as fairly compensated as possible if they are expected to continue to deliver quality results despite the many challenges they face.
The remainder of our list gets at leadership and how they responded to remote work arrangements throughout the pandemic. Many quiet quitters point to being overloaded by projects because their companies can’t maintain staffing levels to meet the demands of their customers. Others point to poor upper management performance as a reason employees feel uncertain of what is expected from their performance and how to improve to meet the demands of the business.
This is underpinned by a lack of corporate transparency and exacerbated by poor communication up and down the leadership chain, making it difficult to learn about evolving policies and where to focus efforts to support business initiatives.
Finally, business leaders have done a poor job throughout the pandemic recognizing the employee performances that have allowed their business to remain in operation despite a global crisis event, while at the same time overwhelming their teams with online meetings and expecting them to tackle a workload intended for staff at least twice its current size.
Employees remain unsure how to prioritize their time while at the same time feeling that their efforts go unrecognized, leading many analysts to ask the question of business leaders, what are you doing to make employees realize their worth to you?
4.9/ 10
Poor salary/benefits
4.9/ 10
Overloaded schedule/Burnout
5.2/ 10
Unsatisfied with career growth and/or daily tasks
5.3/ 10
Bad upper management
5.5/ 10
Lack of company culture and/or communication
5.7/ 10
Personal matters outside of work
5.7/ 10
Not enough employee recognition
5.9/ 10
Lack of company transparency
6/10
Hybrid/remote work distractions
6/ 10
Too many meetings
As evidenced by their insight and feedback through the Pollfish survey and our outreach to the community, employers are greatly concerned about quiet quitting. The movement is impacting workforce efficiency and bottom-line profitability. However, the takeaways from the Pollfish survey say that the solutions lie in the employer’s hands, and it’s up to the business owners and leadership to make the necessary changes to address the underlying concerns leading to quiet quitting.
“Employees are burnt out, and they’re looking to draw healthy boundaries around their job. They may resent that employers expect extra effort or time from them without increasing their compensation fairly. When employees aren’t paid fairly or perceive themselves as being underpaid, they don’t view extra rewards or incentives as sufficient motivation to perform what they perceive to be extra work.”
—John Li, Co-founder and CTO, Fig Loans
“Employees start to pull away when they are not rewarded and recognized for their efforts. The lack of recognition demotivates them. They no longer find it important to put in extra effort for work. Hence, they gradually lose interest and disassociate themselves from tasks.”
—Aima Irfan, Editor in Chief, Inside TechWorld
“Commonly referred to as acting your wage, quiet quitting is a way of dealing with burnout, stress, or poor working conditions. This protest is not without its reason. As employees face more pressure to go above and beyond, the absence of praise, recognition, or compensation quickly takes its toll and in response, they quit quietly by putting in minimum effort. Taking part in this movement brings such inequities to the attention of employers, and sends a message that you get what you pay for. The end goal is to restore a more equitable balance, in which all parties give and receive in equal measure.”
—Max Wesman, COO, GoodHire
A majority of SMB respondents noted adding/improving company benefits as one of the top ways to decrease quiet quitting in the workplace, followed by setting clearer career paths and milestones
Regardless of the underlying causes of quiet quitting, at some point you and your leadership team need to focus on the path forward to combat the causes and decrease quiet quitting in your team.
Along with pay and benefits restructuring, you want to ensure that you’re resuming or revisiting your employee performance evaluation approach and ensuring your team understands what’s expected of them. Quiet quitters will often make the valid argument that they are being asked to work well beyond the boundaries of their positions. Partner with your human resource professionals and ensure that you’ve established clear milestones and position requirements so employees understand how to progress from their current position to the next step.
Improve your check-in process so that it aligns with these new milestones and ensure at every step, you’ve provided your team not only with actionable feedback but also a clear assessment of their performance to that point.
Many of the indicators listed above are clear indicators of poor performance and a mismatch between an employee and the role in which they find themselves. Performance plans are a powerful tool to bring underperforming employees who don’t seem willing to perform the basic tenets of their roles up to the performance standard you expect without appearing to unfairly single them out or punish them.
Performance plans are also a message to all employees that you will hold them accountable to the standards that you’ve set and are a great way to pull up performance across the board. However, performance plans require your management team to have the skill and willingness to implement and follow through on them, which can be a difficult undertaking depending on how many individuals you have them managing.
5/ 10
Add/improve company benefits
5.2/ 10
Set clearer milestones and career paths for employees
5.4/ 10
Have more employee satisfaction check-ins
5.5/ 10
Create performance plans for under-performing employees
5.6/ 10
Hold more company-wide meetings to keep employees informed
5.6/ 10
Enforce stricter employee time tracking
5.6/ 10
Require employees to attend conference calls with their videos on
5.6/ 10
Improve company culture and team engagement activities
5.7/10
Require employees to travel to the office more
5.9/ 10
Require remote/hybrid employees to start working fully in-person
Ultimately, strong business leaders understand that it’s up to them to make the changes in their business necessary to get buy-in from their staff and that the work culture you get is the work culture you demonstrate. The advice from many of our professionals revolves around understanding that you first have to understand your business and ensure it’s built for long-term success, rather than short-term results.
“Employers can prevent quiet quitting by not overworking their teams and incorporating workload increases short-term. It’s okay if there’s extra work once or twice a month, but your employees won’t take it well if this becomes a habit. Plus, don’t forget to appreciate and compensate them for their additional hours. This builds rapport, helping you combat quiet quitting.”
—Najaf Naj Hussain, Co-founder and CEO, Elastio
“Employers can combat this experience by being proactive and reaching out if they notice a shift in their team members’ interest or how they show up to work. Discussing with authentic concern challenges facing their employees demonstrates support. Developing wellness programs and policies that allow individuals to disconnect and breathe instead of pushing through discomfort can help move employees past their challenges. In addition, managers need to have conversations about setting good boundaries with work-life balance when working in a remote or hybrid environment.”
—Kendra Janevski, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, Director of HR, Vault Consulting
“The first thing I’d recommend is analyzing your current roles and their compensation to make sure they’re aligned with each other and competitive to the broader market. A lot of companies have inadvertently fallen behind current salary rates because of inflation and other factors driving up average compensation rates. I also recommend instituting a mentorship program if you don’t have one. This increases the two-way communication between levels of the hierarchy and can help employees see a future and career within the company, giving them the motivation they need to go above and beyond their job description.”
—Jon Hill, Chairman and CEO, The Energists
As with any business challenge, addressing quiet quitting successfully requires business owners and human resource professionals to first identify the underlying causes of the behavior, which can be different for every company. Only in understanding what motivates your staff and where your leadership has failed to uphold your vision and mission for success, will you be able to make the organizational changes necessary to rebuild the passion of your team.
Set A Realistic High-Performance Standard
Perhaps most popularly laid out by Gary Vaynerchuk in an interview he posted on his LinkedIn profile, the fact is that your staff will look at you as the business owner as the standard by which they will perform, but you can never expect them to out-hustle you. Without ownership or a stake in the business, employees will only perform to the standard that you establish, so it is important that you clearly define your business goals and standards and then fairly compensate your team to achieve those goals.
As businesses strive to find the right balance for their brand between remote work, hybrid arrangements, and a full return to the office, it’s important to revisit certain business practices and standards. Do you have a clear hierarchy in place? Does each position have a clearly defined job description and a realistic scope? Are current staffing levels sufficient to meet the needs of your project load or do you need to consider hiring initiatives to lessen the burden on your team across the board? Do you have a clearly defined professional progression in place for every role in your organization so employees have an understanding of what their future looks like with your firm?
If you can’t answer even one of the questions above in the affirmative, it might be time to work with your human resources team or partner with a service provider from the UpCity marketplace and revisit your staffing and management practices to ensure your staff is supported in every way possible to help grow and build your business in 2023.
About the author
David J. Brin
Having recently escaped a 20-year career in Food & Beverage operations management, David is now a Facility Director for a Code Ninjas franchise, a STEM-education concept that uses game development to teach children how to code in various programming languages. David got his start writing professionally as a communications assistant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and has been a freelance copywriter providing white-label services to clients since 2016. His clients operate in industries ranging from managed IT services and software development to marketing and advertising.
