Not to Worry About Quiet Quitting

By now most everyone has heard the new trendy term “quiet quitting”. This in fact, has nothing at all to do with quitting, it simply indicates when employees choose to do the bare minimum that their job requires. Never going above and beyond, never putting in unpaid extra hours, never responding to emails past COB. Some may see this as employees setting healthy boundaries in the quest for work/life balance, while some see it as laziness and a detriment to the company. Over the last month the term gained a lot of traction thanks to one TikToker, whose video on the subject quickly went viral, garnering over 8 million views in just a few weeks. But does this new concern have staying power? Is it actually something that businesses and leadership need to be concerned with? The brains over at Wharton give a resounding ‘no’.

Matthew Bidwell, a management professor at Wharton, has a new quick read (and quick listen on Wharton Business Daily) about what the real issues are that management needs to be worried about. While leadership is of course always interested in getting the highest performance out of their employees, the much bigger issue these days is keeping employees, period. Let’s go beyond the “no one wants to work anymore” mentality here. There has always been those who do not want to be defined by their labor and seek more freedom in their chosen lifestyles. In August, however, 4.3 million workers voluntarily left their jobs, setting a new record. So who has time to worry about quiet quitting when actual quitting is so much more detrimental to a company? Take a few minutes to give Professor Bidwell’s article a quick read, and listen to his discussion on the wider labor market, and where this trend may be going.

Bringing Your Conscience to Work

Wharton’s Business Responsibility professor G. Richard Shell’s graduate course is full of those he calls “ethics refugees”. By this he is referring to those who have entered the business world at a young age, only to be put into a position where valued principles are called into question. Situations of sexual harassment, discrimination, fraud, deception, etc. When faced with these moral dilemmas, some pushed back, and some became so disillusioned that a retreat into the safe harbor of an MBA was necessary.

Inspired by these stories, Shell wrote the book on the subject. The Conscience Code: Lead With Your Values, Advance Your Career is out in paperback this week. The book is organized into 10 chapters that outline the creation of a “conscience code” for resolving problems. Designed as a practical guide to navigating some of the more common sticky ethical situations, the book is able to inspire readers into action, or into recognizing the consequences of inaction.

In a new episode of the Wharton podcast, professor Shell discusses the steps laid out in the book and how to apply them to real-life work situations. “None of us can read other people perfectly, and organizations have branding consultants that burnish their ethical credentials,” Shell says. “I like to tell my students: If you want to stay healthy, don’t go swimming in a dirty pond.”