Everyone knows you’re heading for it. Everyone is waiting for it. But please, when it happens, no temper tantrums, no emotional fireworks. If you’re going to crack up, please do it quietly.
Really, it’s the thing to do.
Remember Quiet Quitting? That used to be a thing. Quiet Quitters did just enough work to keep from getting fired, content to marinate in place while their company fell apart.
And then there was Burnout. That was a thing, too. Burnt-out hulks of their former selves, Burnouts smoldered in place until a sympathetic manager, burned up by their burnout, put them out of their misery by dousing them with unemployment.
While Quiet Quitting and Burnout were good in their day, the work world has moved on. What HR needs now is a new meme to conceptualize the current state of your professional and emotional decline.
Which could be summed up as too distraught to do even the minimum you can get away with (aka Burnout) and too depressed to start looking for another job (aka Quiet Quitting). If that sounds like you, congratulations, you qualify for “Quiet Cracking,” the latest hot topic in HR circles. Or so I learned from “How to Respond to ‘Quiet Cracking,’ a New Workplace Threat” by writer Bruce Crumley on fastcompany.com.
If the vibes at your company bounce between “Severance” and “Squid Games,” the discovery of a major new workplace ailment should keep the HR department busy — and employed — for months, or at least until the next big, buzzy workplace malady is invented.
I say, let the Human Resources Industrial Complex come up with programs to fight Quiet Cracking. We’ll turn their wackadoodle solutions into something that can actually make your work life a whole lot better.
No. 1: Symptoms of Quiet Quitting you can feel — or fake.
If your company is slow to recognize new workplace threats, real or imagined, let them know they’re missing the boat. Wander the HR department mumbling the key words from Fast Company’s description of the Quiet Quitting phenomenon. Here’s your mantra: “I’m disconnected ... I’m demotivated ... I’m detached ... I’m eroding ....”
Repeat until you get someone’s attention or you actually are eroded, detached, demotivated and disconnected. Or, as we call it in HR, management material.
No. 2: Beware: training ahead.
Quiet crackers don’t believe their managers appreciate them or “provide paths for advancing in their work and careers.” One way to resolve these problems would be lavish praise, big fat raises, and more time off, but in most companies, that’s crazy talk. Instead, employers are advised to take a more economical route — “double down on learning and development.”
In a word, training.
If one more off-site will send you spiraling downward from Quiet Quitting into Burnout, consider that companies are also advised to let employees “define some of the themes and contents of the programs themselves.” If this offer is on the conference table, I say take it.
Develop a program in which the team gets together to plan an out-of-office experience that you all agree will reflect your feelings about your jobs. For example, to demonstrate the common complaint that the company doesn’t provide opportunities for advancement, take your managers to the nearest swamp and sink them up to their necks in mud. This will demonstrate how you feel stuck in your job but are unable to move. (Don’t worry about alligators; your managers will scare them away.)
No. 3: And the gold whatchamacallit goes to ...
When all else fails, employers are advised to “publicly recognize employee work and achievements.” This will be a foreign concept to management, but their skittishness could be lessened by viewing such behavior as a “low-cost, high-impact method for boosting morale and self-esteem.”
We’re not talking the usual “good job” and head pat, but a glitzy, blowout event like the Emmys or the Oscars. Possible award categories include “Most Hours of the Workday Spent Playing ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows,’” “Continuous Use of One Paper Clip for More than 10 Years,” “Longest Consecutive Days Stealing Lunches from the Break Room Fridge.” The last award has two separate divisions — with and without tuna fish.
If, despite your labors, your company refuses to accept Quiet Quitting as a problem, explain that a recent Gallup study showed employee disengagement “costs global businesses $8.8 trillion annually in lost productivity.” If this doesn’t get the company to accept Quiet Quitting, start walking around making duck sounds.
When an HR professional comes running, explain that you’re experiencing a new work condition that requires immediate attention.
It’s called Quiet Quacking.
Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@bgplanning.com
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