An invisible curve exists within all teams. Once discussed, most organizations realize it’s another of those “well duh” types of easily discernible management theories anyone can grasp.

Similar to a traditional, bell-shaped distribution curve, you have a majority of people who show up, put in a good day’s work and then go home at the end of the day. I place those people in the middle of the organizational curve. On the right side of that group are those who excel and go above and beyond what’s expected. On the left side are those who begrudgingly show up, do as little as possible, demand more money and complain.

We — as in the royal we of managers, leaders, supervisors … pick your descriptor — spend the vast majority of our time, talents, efforts and energy on the group on the left side of the curve.
We exhaust ourselves and question our abilities to turn them around only to ultimately and painfully reach the inevitable end and bounce ’em.

The debate as to what really exists within an organizational curve is moot in it all depends upon the culture within that organization. For the sake of getting to the point of this column, though, let’s just say the typical curve is 20 percent, 60 percent and 20 percent.

While there are a number of avenues available to go to improve the curve —engagement, empowerment and the like — I’d like to address the 600-pound gorilla that recently entered the room. And that’s the trend of so-called “quiet quitting.”

 If you haven’t heard of quiet quitting, you might want to become familiar with the term and its potential consequences. It’s a way too painful reality that occurs when we spend way too much time on those people on the left side of the curve and those on the right side as well as a good portion of those in the middle start to feel neglected.

Consider first the return on every $1 invested in wages and benefits from each of these groups:

Engaged employees, or 32 percent of a typical work force, work with passion and feel a profound connection to their companies. They drive innovation and move the organization forward. For every $1 you invest in wages and benefits for engaged employees, you’ll receive a return of $2.02.

Not engaged employees, or 50.8 percent of your work force, have checked out. They’re sleepwalking through their work day. They put in the time, but not energy or passion into their work. For every $1 you invest in your not engaged employees, you’ll only recoup about 26 cents.

Actively disengaged employees, or 17.2 percent of your work force, aren’t just unhappy at work, they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish. For actively disengaged employees, you’re lucky to get a 3 cent return.

The latest pandemic in the workplace is the quiet quitting of members of the top group who work a little less hard each day. You can still count on them giving you a little more than your $1 investment. That’s just simply in their makeup. But the real losses manifest themselves between the $1 return and $2.02 return you once received.

This can be thwarted, though, by refocusing your time, talents and energies not on the group to the left, but the one on the right.

Those interesting in learning more can send an email to me. I’ll email them back a spreadsheet detailing the effects on a business related to just four of the more chronic employee relations challenges most organization face — absenteeism, disgruntled employees, engagement and turnover. Under each of those four headings appear forward-thinking strategies for empowerment and engagement that will benefit them and their organizations. 

Hopefully, you’ll be able to stem the latest pandemic sweeping across the globe — quiet quitting.