What Exactly Is Quiet Quitting?

Welcome to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the simple and AI-powered rewards and recognition platform for employee engagement. From the Great Resignation to a new trending buzzword, quiet quitting has swept the internet and workplaces by storm this year, and is now urging leaders to take action. To understand more about the hype and how to ultimately overcome it, listen to this exclusive episode of the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast.

Susmita Sarma: Hi everyone, I'm your host Susmita, and please join me to welcome my guest today, Ojaswini Sapatnekar, an experienced human resources professional with a demonstrated history of working in the IT, ITES, and engineering manufacturing industry. Recently, she joined Intangles Lab Pvt. Ltd. as the Head of People Strategy. Hi Ojaswini, welcome to the show.

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: Hi Susmita, good morning. Thank you so much.

Susmita Sarma: Good morning, and I hope you're doing great. Before we start with the topic today, it would be great if you could tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and your professional journey so far.

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: Definitely, I'd be happy to. My father served in the Indian Army, so I'm what you'd call an army kid, born and raised across different postings and different cities. I studied in several places growing up, went on to graduate in computer applications, and later completed my MBA in human resources. After finishing my education, I've spent the past several years continuously working in HR. Very frankly, I have always had a great love for people, and I wanted an opportunity to do something meaningful for every life I touch. I love this profession because it gives me a platform to achieve that. Apart from work, I'm a huge animal lover, I love cinema, and I love water a lot, so most of my holidays end up being water holidays.

Susmita Sarma: So you love water sports?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: Yes.

Susmita Sarma: Great, great, Ojaswini. I believe you also had a stint at a previous organization before you joined Intangles Lab recently, isn't it? Would you like to tell us a bit about that organization, and also about Intangles, since our listeners would love to know more?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: I've been very fortunate to work with some great organizations and lovely people, and each organization I've been part of had a purpose it was fulfilling, not just doing business, but also contributing to society. My previous organization was a consumer technology company that used technology to serve defense personnel, and I felt a real connection there coming from a defense background myself. My current organization, Intangles, is a digital twin technology company. Both organizations were founded around a decade ago, and Intangles is on a mission to use technology to transform how organizations do business by partnering with the logistics and transportation industry globally. Logistics and transportation are the backbone of any economy, ensuring resources like machines and materials reach the right place at the right time. But this industry is plagued with issues, from infrastructure gaps to outdated technology. With our proprietary technology, we use physics-based analytics, sensors on the machine, and machine learning to simulate the real-world environment in a virtual world, giving real-time and predictive insights. This helps the transportation and logistics industry understand vehicle performance, optimize utilization, and enable predictive maintenance, all of which give a competitive advantage while also helping the optimal use of energy and preserving the environment.

Susmita Sarma: And the advantages are many. Now suppose I say advantage, not to business, but to you and me. How does a normal human being feel the benefit of this technology?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: If you were ever stuck somewhere in a traffic jam, it's probably because a big truck, container, or bus had a breakdown on the road. Now, if that vehicle had our technology built in, there's a good chance the breakdown could have been predicted in advance, and a vehicle at risk of breaking down would never have been sent out on the road by the transport or logistics team in the first place. That's the kind of impact our technology can bring to the world.

Susmita Sarma: Right, right. Great work at Intangles, Ojaswini, and I wish you all the best for your future with the organization. Moving forward to today's topic, that is quiet quitting. It's quite a broad term, so can you refresh us on what it actually means? Is it the Great Resignation that has morphed into quiet quitting? Our listeners would like to understand if the idea is really about wanting to quit a job, or just wanting to focus time on things outside of work, or is it about rejecting the idea of going above and beyond in one's career?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: I think there's no single, straightforward answer for why a person engages in quiet quitting. But before we even touch on that, I'd like to say it is not the Great Resignation that has morphed into quiet quitting. Resignation is about moving from one employer to another, but it isn't really a change in behavior, it's a change in employer. The reasons for that change could be many, wanting more money, a bad boss, bad culture, a better job, a better culture. But ultimately, you move from one employer to another and continue with a similar set of behaviors, with very little change in how you conduct yourself at work or how much you actually do. I'd actually say that prolonged quiet quitting can lead to resignation, but not the other way around. That's the real relationship between resignation and quiet quitting.

Now, we've had two years of a pandemic, and a lot has changed globally in terms of how employment happens and the relationship between employer and employee. But even before that, the reasons people take up employment have gone through a huge evolution, right from the industrial revolution to today. For earlier generations, maybe our grandparents' or great-grandparents' generation, employment was purely a means to an end. They needed that job to meet their daily needs, and loyalty, whether it existed or not, was really about making sure those basic necessities were taken care of. The salary was there to satisfy a person's basic needs. After that came a stage where employment was about wants, having a house, a better lifestyle, a car, something beyond just the basics. And now, in the current generation, most people are engaged by their desires, wanting branded goods, wanting to travel, wanting an international holiday. The needs and the wants have largely already been taken care of by earlier generations, so the reason a person engages with a job today is very different, which makes it very challenging for an employer to satisfy an employee.

Earlier, if the salary covered your needs, you'd stay. Later, if the employer gave you a good work-life balance, you'd stay. Now, desires vary a lot more from person to person than needs do, and people also want to be respected, which is a very big word in itself.

Now, that's the global picture. Coming to the India-specific scenario, for many years, Indian companies have been providing services to companies across the world, so India was largely a service exporter. As a result, an employee wasn't just working for their own company, they were also working for a client organization. That makes the working environment far more complex, you have a boss who's always right, and a client who's the king, so to speak, and this led to a lot of stretched working hours, a lot of extra effort that was expected by default from the employee. And employees were willing to take that on because they wanted to satisfy their wants or their desires.

Now, with the younger generation entering the workforce, they're looking to fulfil themselves, fulfil a sense of purpose, and find a challenging, learning-oriented work environment. If you're putting in long hours, if you're taking that extra leap to do more, the expectation is that you'll gain something extra in return. And when that doesn't happen, the employee starts questioning why they're doing it at all. And when that question isn't answered, that's when people start questioning whether they should keep putting in that extra effort.

So here, I'd split the term "quiet quitting" into its two words and look at the basic dictionary meaning. When you say "quitting," it means you stop doing something you were already doing. So if you have an employee who already had a certain baseline behavior, working limited hours, not really going the extra mile even earlier, you wouldn't categorize that as quitting. But if you had someone who was engaged beyond others, who genuinely wanted to take on additional tasks, learn by doing, or take on the responsibilities of others, and you suddenly see that behavior stop, that is quitting. I was doing something, and I stopped doing it, that's quitting. If I was never doing extra in the first place, then it isn't quitting, it's something else entirely.

Now, in terms of personality and human behavior, some people are aggressive, some are passive, some are assertive, and then there's a category of people who are passive-aggressive, people who want to do something about a situation but aren't very vocal about it. And typically, this is the kind of person who engages in quiet quitting. I'm not saying others won't, but there's a much larger likelihood that a passive-aggressive personality is the one engaging in quiet quitting. A purely passive person probably won't change their behavior much over a prolonged period. An aggressive person will probably vocalize what's disturbing them, or take it into a category of open conflict, they'll take action. An assertive person will probably just speak up about it directly. It's the passive-aggressive kind of nature that leans toward quiet quitting, they won't speak about it, and they won't take direct action about it either, even though it isn't that they simply want to ignore something that's going wrong.

So they'll engage in quiet quitting, but the real issue is often, "Even though I'm doing so much for the company, even though I'm going the extra mile, there's no differentiation." Going the extra mile doesn't always have to mean a promotion, but there should be some form of differentiation, that's what people are really looking for. If someone is just doing what's part of their job description, their role, without going beyond it because, frankly, the world has moved past rigid timing and always being physically in office, but they're completing what's expected and nothing more, versus an employee who is going beyond, demonstrating behaviors above and beyond what's expected, there has to be some kind of differentiation in how each of them is treated or recognized, whether in small ways or big ones. And when that differentiation doesn't show up, that's when people start to want to stop being different. And that, all in all, is how I'd define quiet quitting: you stop demonstrating a desired behavior, and you don't vocalize it, you just quietly start blending in with the usual and stop being unusual.

Susmita Sarma: So in the long run, quiet quitting can definitely turn into resignation, isn't it?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: I think so. You have an employee who's talented, who is the right fit for the company, and as an organization, if you fail to recognize a change in their behavior, fail to notice that new pattern, then there's a real possibility the person sees it as a signal that the organization doesn't value going the extra mile. Within quiet quitters too, there will be some who feel that doing less doesn't really bother the employer and has no repercussions for them, so they think, "Let me just continue like this." But there will also be people who, by nature, want to do more, and that category of quiet quitters will eventually move on to organizations that do differentiate people who go beyond the call of duty.

Susmita Sarma: So for people who are actually in this phase of quiet quitting, especially when the organization seems to be letting it slide, is it empowering for the employee, or would you say it's a cry for help?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: It could be empowering if, after stepping back from putting in extra effort, that saved energy and time is being used to do something better, adding value to yourself or even to the organization in other ways, say, by taking up in-house teaching or learning sessions, then it's empowering. However, if that energy goes into negative conversations, negative thoughts, negative narratives, then it can spiral into more and more negativity. So quietly stepping back from extra effort is empowering only if you use that time and energy for something better.

Is it a cry for help? Definitely it is, especially for people who genuinely want to go above and beyond and do more than is expected of them. It's a cry for help because when someone who was going beyond the call of duty stops demonstrating that behavior, it's an indicator that they're questioning their previous behavior, first asking themselves why they did it at all, and they're seeking that answer without getting it, without getting the motivation to keep up that differentiated behavior on a daily basis. From an organization's point of view, that employee could either be a top performer and a real talent, or someone who isn't the right fit for the role. Either way, if it's a talented, high-performing employee, immediate action needs to be taken, to understand and log what went wrong and figure out what corrective steps the organization can take.

Susmita Sarma: That's exactly my next question, because it's very detrimental to any organization, and quiet quitting can set in at any point during someone's life cycle in the organization. So how should leaders respond to a situation that needs a helping hand?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: I'll build on that, because I like where this is going. When you have someone who's a talent showing quiet quitting behavior, it's important for the organization to first have some way of identifying that, whether formally documented or informally known, leaders should be aware of who their top talent is. And if that kind of behavior is observed, the organization first needs to communicate clearly that they view this person as talent, because very often that openness and communication is missing. If someone is talented, their leader should have progressive plans in place for their growth within the organization, and should share those plans, succession or growth plans, with the employee, so they know the organization is planning not just for itself, but for their growth as an individual too.

Secondly, leaders need to sit down and understand what has actually led to this quiet quitting behavior. Addressing the challenges faced by that individual can help them, and it may also help others who might be heading down the same path. Sometimes you'll be in a position to actually fix those challenges, and where you can't, you need to build understanding through continuous dialogue and openness about why those challenges exist or why the organization can't address them right now, and seek input from the individual on how to create a workable situation for both the organization and themselves. When you create that kind of dialogue, it genuinely gives the individual a sense of empowerment, because they become part of creating the solution rather than remaining part of the problem.

At the same time, if you have quiet quitters who fall into the segment of people who aren't particularly talented or aren't the right fit, the organization still has to invest in finding the right fit for that person. Very often, when someone isn't performing in their current role, we try to find the problem within the person. But it isn't always the case that the problem lies with them, or that they simply can't perform. My personal belief is that every individual has the potential to perform well in some capacity, it's the organization's responsibility to find the right capacity for that person and give them the right opportunity. If it still doesn't work out after that, that becomes a different conversation altogether, but the investment in learning and the right opportunity has to be made for each individual. If these two things are put together in a balanced way, I think it goes a long way in solving quiet quitting.

Susmita Sarma: Rightly said, and I really love that last point, that every employee deserves a second chance if they aren't able to give a hundred percent in their current role. So Ojaswini, do you think some employees are also taking advantage of this situation?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: Definitely. There's a segment of employees who try to take advantage of any situation, they'll just sit back and observe. In organizational behavior, there's a term for this, being a fence-sitter, neither taking a stand for something nor against it, just watching what happens and looking for an opportunity to benefit from the situation. And I think that's very detrimental to an organization's culture. Employees should remember that we engage with them as adults, and everyone has the right to an opinion and freedom of speech. Everyone should exercise that and reach out to the right people in the organization to voice their opinions and concerns, so that corrective action can be taken in time, and even if a correction doesn't happen immediately, at least there's an understanding of the situation.

Susmita Sarma: That makes sense. Is there anything else about quiet quitting you'd like to share with our audience today, Ojaswini? Because the next question is about how you see the future of work.

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: Yes, one thing I'd like to point out is the difference between quiet quitting and people who are simply seeking a healthy work-life balance, or trying to achieve things beyond just their job. There's a marked difference, and it's important for both employees and employers to recognize it. People trying to achieve things beyond work are actually setting their priorities right, they aren't shying away from their responsibilities at work or from going the extra mile in their job. But outside of work hours, they're engaging in value-generating activities. Some people use that time for online learning, some of it free, some paid. Others become social influencers or create content online. The gig economy has grown a lot because of the pandemic, so people take up freelancing too. There's a lot people can do online, remotely, in ways that add value to themselves.

So if you have someone who's performing well at their job, isn't shying away from learning or going the extra mile, and is still managing to keep work within reasonable limits, that allows them to use their spare time for something value-generating too, whether that's learning, creating financial opportunities, doing social work with an NGO, or investing in their health. I've seen a lot of people join gyms, trekking groups, or outdoor activity groups outside of working hours. I think that's a very healthy thing to do, and it doesn't really fall under quiet quitting at all. Organizations should actually encourage this, because it gives employees a real sense of fulfilment, they're developing themselves beyond just their job, and that's part of a genuine work-life balance. I think it's always good to encourage openness and transparency, so people feel comfortable coming forward and sharing what they're doing outside of work, and the employer stays aware of it rather than it being a black box. If you try to curtail it and tell people not to do anything outside of their job, they simply won't be transparent about what they're doing, but they'll still go ahead and do it anyway, that's just how it works, similar to how some countries ban an entire industry while others legalize and regulate it, people will pursue what they want to pursue regardless.

As the economy evolves, we're seeing more and more startups, and we're moving from being a largely export-driven economy to a more self-sustaining one. The definition of "going beyond the call of duty" is going to change. Earlier, the definition was that the moment a client organization reached out, you had to respond immediately, no matter what you were doing, working well beyond a nine-to-six schedule, not necessarily because there was that much work, but because your client's working hours were completely different from yours. Now, as we become more India-focused, with more startups, more freelancing, and more independent professionals in the economy, the definition is going to shift from quantity to quality, from how many hours you put in, to how much value you actually generate. So going beyond the call of duty is genuinely going to be redefined at its core, and both individuals and organizations should prepare for that shift and make the most of it.

Susmita Sarma: Great share, Ojaswini. So finally, is there a book, a podcast, or a resource you'd want to suggest to businesses so they can learn more about quiet quitting?

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: I won't suggest something specifically about quiet quitting, but I'd definitely recommend people read more about human behavior and human nature in general. During this conversation, I touched on the different natures people have, whether passive, aggressive, assertive, or passive-aggressive, essentially, different ways people react to stimuli. As HR professionals, or as entrepreneurs, we need to understand how people express their desires, wants, and needs within an organization, and how they express themselves in general. Understanding that matters, because quiet quitting is just one phenomenon, but understanding basic human nature will help you understand a lot more about how people react to things in general.

Susmita Sarma: That makes sense, understanding how people respond to stimuli. Great, Ojaswini. Finally, we'd love to know how our listeners can reach out to you if they want to connect for further discussion.

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: Definitely, if people want to reach out to me, the easiest way is to connect with me on LinkedIn. And if any business wants to learn more about Intangles, they can visit our website, which has more information about what we do and how to get in touch.

Susmita Sarma: Okay, great. That was an amazing conversation with you, Ojaswini. Thank you so much for being here on this podcast, and for making it such a fruitful one. Thank you once again for joining me.

Ojaswini Sapatnekar: Thank you very much. It was my pleasure to be on this podcast, and I'm deeply thankful to you and to the organizers of the Vantage HR Influencers podcast for giving me this opportunity.

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