“Employees Don’t Leave Companies, They Leave Managers”

What is ‘Quiet quitting’ and 'Quiet firing?’

Quiet quitting aa a term refers to employees who work-to-rule and avoid the concept of going above and beyond. In some cases, it's seen as a rejection of hustle culture and a way for employees to create boundaries between their work and personal lives.

'Quiet firing' on the other hand is when managers intentionally distance their employees from opportunities to further their career: for example, by obstructing them from participating in special projects, or hindering their chances of a promotion or a raise. Quiet firing employees might be viewed as a response to employees quiet quitting their jobs, while employees might quiet quit as a result of suspecting their boss is trying to 'quiet fire' them. These actions serve as an endless, tiring, and unproductive feedback loop. 

While The BW Journalist got into a candid conversation with Puja Kapoor, Global Senior Director - HR, OLX Autos - OLX Group, she further explained her viewpoint that, “the last two years have been extremely taxing and every single person in their lives have had setbacks at some moment of those two years and reflected, what am I doing? What do I want to do in my life? Do I want to keep running a race? Or do I want to do this? Or do I want to do that? What's my passion?”

“There's so much digital learning happening, despite social media going all over the place that social media itself is a learning place, like you're learning so many things from there. So people have sat back and reflected what I really want to do, I don't want to do, and some have made up their mind that I really want to operate within this framework. And I don't want to do anything beyond that framework, or timings. And some have said that, you know, I like doing what I'm doing. And so I don't have a issue with the timings of what work I want to do, or what I don't want to do. It's work life integration for me, and I will continue to do things that, you know, make me feel good or give me growth in my career and things like that. So we have got now a wide section of employee groups that choose to do what they want to do, based on what they have reflected for themselves and decided that this is how they want to live their life and their professional life.”

So what as an organisation we need to do is we need to provide more tools, techniques, avenues for people to drive more productivity, which itself will help them stay in the same zone of times that they operate.

Leader’s Role

The way people describe that the managers induce that pressure, or leaders in use and pressure, it somehow becomes evident that the companies that may be a little immature or in hurry of showing results very fast are putting in pressure on their employees incessantly. But most organizations are very conscious on portraying what does it mean to be a good manager. 

“And we all know that people don't leave companies, they leave managers at the end of the day.”

 So if a manager has a great relationship has great continuous conversations have great work related growth conversations, and things like that, thenthat journey is well continued. But it's also fine that there are situations where you have fabulous relationships between a team member and a manager. But the team member wants to do something different, something bigger, something much brighter, and the person takes a choice of sort of reducing some things of their work. And moving on. 

Kapoor is of the view that, “I've been in a situation that someone and I know someone as well who was a leader, but today is reporting to their own team member because they wanted to step back in their lives. And they wanted to say that I want to take care of my ailing mother. So I need more time on this side. And so I will give up some responsibilities. And I'm okay doing that.”

The world is definitely changing. Therefore, what organisations need to do is perhaps help managers and keep coaching managers how to become more inclusive, how to become more emotionally intelligent in managing expectations. Because the more you drive numbers, the lesser you get them. But the more you make people inclusive as a part of your own decisions, part of a lot of activities that you do, their participation improves, and they start to start getting better at work. 

Way Ahead

“So for me, I personally think it's very dependent on the manager. And I don't think that it is a phenomenon that is new. It is something that has been there for a very long time, and organizations have constantly coached and developed managers. And let's also remember, there are hundreds of new managers that come out every day, and there are hundreds of new managers who sunset their careers. So, the cycle is on and therefore the coaching cycle is also on, right,” asserts Kapoor.

And therefore these phenomenons have existed forever. It's just that today, our realisation is much wider, much open, because we have made these topics as a topic of, you know, real consumption for organizations to get better. And in the pandemic, we have laid more emphasis on it.