Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
Because these catchy phrases are popular, some employees might assume it’s okay to copy them. Yes, these seemingly innocent but growing list of workplace catchphrases with cute and memorable names (like quiet quitting) has, at least in theory, inspired some disgruntled employees to act selfishly.
This is why I label them Selfish Employee Actions (or SEAs). Because they hurt your company, only selfish employees would try them. But the question still arises as to whether they are a significant workforce problem or just another area of HR hype.
They would, of course, be worthy of significant management attention if a large number of your frustrated employees actually assumed that they were good trends to follow. But simply hearing about these practices probably isn’t enough to get your employees to copy them.
This article has three primary purposes: first, to estimate how often employees implement these actions; second, to assess how much damage these actions actually do; and finally, to explore what companies and managers can do to prevent or limit them.
This is a think piece – its goal is to make you rethink your approach to these workplace phrases.
A Quick Example Of A Phrase That Describes A Selfish Employee Action (SEA)
If you don’t know much about these phrases and their impact, here is an example. In most cases, when an employee is facing an unresolvable work situation, they either quit or put up with it.
However, when employees learn about the SEA option known as “quiet quitting,” some instead decide to selfishly hold onto their job security, while at the same time “getting even” with management for giving them an unfair workload. So this time, they decided to stay. But they then purposely (but quietly) reduce their workload to the point just above where they can avoid being fired.
Some other recently popular SEA “catchphrases” that could have negative impacts within your team include quiet cracking, the great stay, rage applying, and job hugging/cuffing. Note: You can find definitions of all of the common workforce SEA phrases here.
Until Managers Know Their Actual Bottom-Line Impacts, They Won’t Take SEA Seriously
Instead of being merely memorable, cute, and perhaps harmless, it’s important to realize that if a significant number of your employees took these negative actions (if they were to occur widely), they would definitely cause costly damage to your teams.
So the next section covers the top economic damages that would occur if these practices were widespread at your company. The most serious damage appears early in this list.
- Assuming that these employee actions require management action is the most costly mistake – perhaps the most important lesson for managers to learn is that despite their widespread hype, the actual appearance of more than a handful of SEAs at a well-managed company would actually be quite rare, so before you lose a lot of sleep and put a lot of management time into these catchphrase actions. You need to develop an effective internal process for determining how often they occur. As well as how much economic damage they are doing to your company. Because without this company-impact data, my advice to most managers is to simply ignore them.
- A reduction in the team’s productivity will be the most costly impact – many of your employees will believe that your company is taking advantage of them. And the best way that individual employees feel they can get even is to consciously reduce their productivity. I previously mentioned how quiet quitters will hurt team productivity. However, the employee action, known as “bare minimum Mondays,” may even have a greater impact on your team’s productivity. Because when your employees learn about the practice of purposely reducing their production on Monday in order to make their “workload fairer,” others will likely go along. And over time, the impacts of the team’s reduced production levels will extend to other areas of your production process. To the point where it will impact every “downline step” in your workflow process. As a result, now your whole process will routinely miss its quotas and deadlines.
- The turnover of your top performers will likely increase – years ago, “The Great Resignation” was an SEA catchphrase that spurred a lot of costly employee turnover. But today, none of the many SEAs directly cause an increase in the number of selfish and disgruntled employees who quit. However, the anxiety, disruption, and lower productivity that these selfish employee actions create will cause many of your best employees to consider leaving. So that they can go to a company where the employees are less selfish, and therefore everyone’s odds of success are much greater.
- Recruiting-related SEAs will hurt future recruiting – when your employees learn about “rage applying” (where a disgruntled former employee floods your career website with applications). Or after your employees watch the popular “Quittok” resignation videos on TikTok. Your employees might believe that these negative actions are common. Your selfish ex-employees may end up copying these practices. And if the impression that your company is suffering from recruiting problems gets out on social media. That publicity will directly hurt your employer brand image and your current and future recruiting results. Managers may also be able to minimize any future disruption that might be caused by recently departed disgruntled former employees if managers were to redesign their exit interview process, so that their disgruntled employees would no longer be angry when they leave.
- Employees will stop trusting HR when it does little to stop SEA actions – if your employees realize that these employee actions are hurting both the team and the company. Your impacted employees will expect HR to do something about it. However, most HR departments lack this capability and are unlikely to provide an effective solution. Therefore, many employees will lose trust in HR after they experience no results. Unfortunately, the loss of trust will make most employees less willing to ask their HR professionals questions about this and other serious issues.
- Keeping track of these SEAs will take up a great deal of everyone’s time – many managers consider it their professional obligation to keep up with the latest issues (including new SEAs). In this case, much of that invested research will be difficult and especially time-consuming. Few of these employee actions have objective definitions or accurate ways of measuring them. So much of this manager research time will be wasted. And because your employees may have an interest in implementing some of these selfish actions. They will also waste a lot of work time researching these employee actions.
- SEA may inadvertently spur an excessive push for more automation – because frequently hearing that workers “want to do less” as a result of hearing workplace jargon like quiet quitting, grumpy staying, lazy girl jobs, quiet cracking, and employee burnout. Any widespread drive to do less may remind managers and executives of how little some employees appear to care about their productivity levels and their contribution to the team. This frustration with human employees may inadvertently change your executives’ preference for automating work away from humans and towards technology replacements (even in cases where the change is not fully economically justified).
Action Steps For Limiting The Number Of SEAs At Your Company
My research has found that most of the SEA actions that were mentioned today are actually quite rare. And when they do occur, they happen primarily at poorly managed companies. However, even if you are a well-managed company. There is enough uncertainty around the frequency of these harmful employee actions that it is still wise for managers and HR professionals to be fully prepared for them by conducting some internal research.
First, determine the extent to which these SEAs occur at your company. Next, determine if they are causing enough economic damage to require a targeted management response. And if your internal research determines that management action is required. Below you will find the key implementation steps for reducing the occurrence of SEAs at your company.
- Begin by educating managers about this potential problem – if your research indicates that there is a chance that you might soon have a problem. It makes sense to be fully prepared. The first step in that preparation is to educate and warn your managers about these employee actions and the damage they can do, at least to the point where a manager will at least initially know one when they see it. When they discover one, they know to immediately ask for additional help.
- Develop a process for identifying these potential employee actions – HR leaders should develop a process that team managers can use to identify any of these damaging employee actions that are currently occurring within their team. That identification process should include tracking team productivity, surveying employees/managers about their problems, and identifying the level of employee engagement in their team.
- Try to reduce the talk about these employee actions – this might seem like a small thing. However, every executive and manager needs to realize that talking about these harmful actions around employees will dramatically increase the chances that an employee will actually try one. So, managers should be educated about the consequences of mentioning these actions. Either during employee meetings or in communications that will likely be read by employees. And when managers are confronted directly by employees about them. Managers should be taught to respond with a discouraging note. Informing the employee that the company already has an effective policy for identifying and punishing those who take selfish actions.
- HR must train a specialist who can end these employee actions after they are identified – Stopping one of these employee practices after it occurs requires a trained specialist. So, HR must designate at least one individual to be responsible for preventing and ending these practices. Their first responsibility should be developing a list of “early identifiers.” Or signals that managers can use to quickly spot any of these employee actions. This expert should also know how to identify the underlying issues that caused this particular employee to act this way. HR must also put together a list of penalties for the employees who have taken one of these actions. This expert must also develop brief and engaging educational materials. That will help managers prevent any of their team members from even considering one of these actions. And finally, HR must put together a set of metrics that will accurately gauge the effectiveness of your SEA efforts.
Final Thoughts
Of course, it’s hard to ignore these workplace catchphrases. However, because these phrases (and the actions behind them) might be little more than a fad, partly because they were recently coined by a group of psychologists who simply wanted to garner more attention, and partly because there is almost no hard evidence that these practices are widespread.
And that possibility of low relevance means your first initial reaction when you hear about them should be patience and caution, rather than panic. At least until you find out that these actions are likely to begin occurring within your own company.
So after you complete your internal research, you decide that it is time to act. I recommend that you follow the provided implementation steps that I have developed over the last decade of work on “HR Speak.”
Thanks for reading
Notes for the reader
This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was called “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.
You can subscribe to Dr. Sullivan’s weekly Talent Management articles here or by following him on LinkedIn.
