Quiet quitting and re-engaging

Times are changing, not the products, not the machines, but our human capital is our unique selling point. So why then is the most important function in a company not occupied by a HR-professional?

In this blog I want to open a new discussion. The highest functions in companies are often occupied with professionals who often have their specialization in a certain occupation, these are often specialities in: sales, productivity, the product itself, and sometimes even finances.

However, it is very rare that we see an HR professional on the highest seat of a company (read: never). Why is that? I would argue that HR has the most important role in a company in the 21st century and therefore it only seems natural that somebody with HR-affinity holds the highest office.  

The highest office – a brief history

Historically the highest functions in previous societies were either ranked by ‘birth right’ or age. A prince was born to be a king and a farmer’s son was born to be a farmer. Additionally, the elder brother (because in those times we are not even talking about equality between genders) often held the highest regard in the family.

When we transformed from a feudal society to a capitalist society our order of who holds the highest function and why also changed. Birth right and age made place for private property and capital. In the beginning of our capitalist society, it was the people who were most skilled in their profession (artisans, craftsmen and guildsmen) who held the highest offices in their organizations.

With the industrial revolution in full force, these professionals had to make place for the people who knew most about machines and production. After the second world war these mass-producing professionals had to make place for productivity professionals. Average output and efficiency became the drive of many companies to outperform the competition.

Shortly thereafter the golden age of capitalism required professionals who knew how to handle flows of money. The highest occupation became related to financial specialization. Fast forwarding to current day, the highest office is often related to specialization in terms of sales, productivity, the product itself or finance. CEO positions are, more often than not, occupied by somebody who has a technical skill.

What is important?

Let’s do a recap, what have we had so far; we picked our leaders based upon: birth right, age, artisanry, skills related to production, productivity, finance, sales and the product itself. Are we missing something? Well, I believe we do.

Now in the 21st century human capital seems to be the most important asset for most companies. The people who walk in our hallways, sell and produce our products, facilitate finance, logistics and purchasing, it’s the people who are the beating heart of an organisation. They are our unique selling points. That has not gone unnoticed. More and more companies are busy trying to retain and develop their talent, and more and more companies are started to provide the means of doing so. Especially in niche industries, any industry remotely dealing with software and industries which require specific skills (I think this captures our entire economy), employers know how important it is to retain and develop their talent.

From this I can only conclude one thing, the most important focus of our companies now should be the people working in them. This means that we need leaders and CEO’s who not only understand HR, but who are also proficient in the HR world.

Shifting focus

Why would you go through the trouble of finding a CEO who has a focus on HR? Why do we require such emphasis? Well, because every time before us also required change and new ideas based upon what was important at that time. Now we entered the era wherein the most important part of our company is based on our people and their, often irreplaceable, talents. Society is focussed on letting each and everybody develop their talent to maximise our output. Schools, universities, training centres, they all know the importance of a development focussed approach. Therefore, it is time that companies adopt the same focus, which requires the same type of leaders.

It is therefore important that our future CEOs not just understand a recruitment process, but that they are able to build up an entire talent acquisition strategy. That they are not only able to see the value of teambuilding exercises, but that they understand how to shape and create cultural change. That they are not only concerned with training their employees to stay up to date with technologies, but that they can shape trajectory and development plans to provide opportunities for growth.

In short, it does not suffice anymore that our leaders know and do the basics. It is time that HR takes its rightful place in the centre of a company whose main unique selling point is its people. It is time that we accept that the centre stage of our time belongs to HR and development, but that also means that it is time for our HR professionals to step up to the plate. It is not enough to stand in line and to ‘offer service when asked’, HR departments need to transform themselves from administrators to proactive managers.

We need to find value which we can contribute to our employers. Find cultural problems and solve them, develop training and development strategies and empower our co-workers to be co-champions. It is only by doing so that HR will be lifted to strategic importance and that we get leaders who understand and are proficient in the realm of HR.

In conclusion

For me it is only clear that the next generation of new leaders has a background in HR. We are broadly agreeing that our human capital is in the widest sense the most important aspect of our company. We are recruiting, coaching, training and developing our employees, but to truly stand out for our employees, HR needs to be lifted to strategic importance. Therefore, I believe that we need leaders who understand this importance and have the capabilities to do so.

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“Quiet quitting” – it seems to be the latest within HR fashion. What is it and why are we talking about it?

First off all, I think the term “quiet quitting” is wrong and bad. People are not silently leaving office buildings to stop working or quitting their jobs in complete silence – that is not at all what this is about. Quiet quitting is the idea that people are not going “above and beyond” their paygrade anymore and just do the work they are paid for.

Let’s be real. Why should an employee do more than they are paid for? An employee agreement is just that: you pay somebody to do their job. Nothing more, nothing less. That means: not answering emails on a holiday, not working outside office hours, and not staying late to finish that project.

So, if there is anything I want you to take away from this post, then this is it: let’s stop talking about “quiet quitting” and start talking about “disengaging”, because that is what it is. People are still doing their jobs, but they are slowly become disengaged and unmotivated to “go above and beyond”.

Why more and more people start to quit quietly?

Now you might ask: Why? Why is this happening? The internet seems to be split up between two reasons: 1) Employees are drastically re-evaluating their work-life balance, or 2) bad leadership has undervalued and demotivated employees. Whatever the reasoning behind it, its implications are truly important. Disengaged employees will perform less than engaged employees, impacting the performance of your company overall.

Before we jump into solutions for a “problem” we do need to consider whether somebody became disengaged because of re-evaluating the balance in their worklife, or because of bad leadership and demotivation. If somebody wants to revaluate the balance in their worklife, there is maybe nothing you could (or should) do. Your employee will do their job, but according to the parameters that you have set in the contract – and that is it.

If somebody became disengaged because of bad leadership or demotivation, then there are opportunities to re-engage your employees. So, let’s move on to the interesting stuff: how to re-engage employees!

What can we do?

At this point, if you still expect your employees to go above and beyond without them getting anything in return you should not be surprised that your employees get disengaged or unmotivated. And why should they? You are offering nothing in return. The good news is there are solutions. The bad news is that those solutions will require effort.

If you are a boss, manager, or leader whose employees are slowly disengaging, there are ways to turn this process around. How? By re-engaging with your disengaged employees. Here are 5 ways to do that:

1. Asking the tough questions

On a daily basis, walk around the office and stop by or call one colleague and blatantly ask them: “What are we not talking about here at work? What can we improve?” This is a powerful way of directly asking somebody to vent some frustrations and let them be a key part of an improvement process that they see as problematic.

You might discover some unique opportunities while engaging one employee at a time. There are ways to make this into a scalable process as well for larger companies.

2. Inspiration and daily work

Remind people of your vision, your mission, your morning-star. Connect meetings to the abstract level of your purpose. We are here to make money, yes, but there is more to it. “Today we are doing A, B, C, which will allow our clients to do D, E, and F – which will improve the lives of/the world/the environment” – you get the drill. People need inspiration to stay engaged. Continuously.

3. Allowing engagement

A lot of managers expect a top-down management structure where employees simply accept the strategy, take on their tasks as instructed, and are fully engaged into everything they do. Now this is a prime example of having you cake and eating it. You can’t have it both. You’ll have to choose. Either you choose a management structure where you want to impose your will, strategy, structure, and tasks – but also accept disengaged employees, OR you involve your employees with decision making processes around structure, strategy, and their tasks to get them engaged.

4. Development, perspective, and incentive

One way of engaging disengaged employees is by giving them a clear-cut “carrot” to re-engage. You can do this by giving them the perspective of development. That either may be a promotion, an education or training (paid for by the company), or a wider set of responsibilities.

Now I know that this is a bit of a sensitive topic, but you can do that through a bit of good-old performance management. Does that mean measuring every datapoint you have from when somebody clocks in to how fast they type emails? No of course not, this is not the 20th century anymore. But you can set up a couple of KPI’s that reflect a concrete goal and subsequent reward.

5. Improve leadership

Sometimes it is hard to admit, but if you can’t point out the problem in the room – then maybe you are the problem in the room. During your times you meet 1-to-1 with your employees, try to ask what you can improve about your leadership style. Ask your employees what you can improve or what they miss in your leadership today. Sometimes your employees require different ways of leadership than what you are offering today – maybe more directive, maybe more guidance, or maybe more freedom and individual responsibility.

In conclusion

“Quite quitting” is a bogus term that is simply incorrect. People are reconsidering what they want in life and can become disengaged at work because of a multitude of reasons. If they are simply reconsidering their work life balance, then there is little you could (or should) do. If they are becoming disengaged because of bad leadership or demotivation, then there are things you can do. If you need help:

1. asking the tough questions
2. connecting your vision and mission to your daily work
3. identifying where you can involve your employees more
4. developing incentive programs
5. improving your leadership capacity

Then get in touch with us and see what we can do for you!

Branding and culture are two separated dimensions often run by separated teams. This is problematic because many companies do not realise that branding and culture are part of the same process. So why are branding and culture part of the same process?

In most organisations branding is driven by the marketing department whereas cultural projects are driven by the People (HR) department. Often these two continuous projects (and participants) communicate little or not at all with one another, and that is because they are perceived as separate projects. This goes against our vision of what branding and culture is and how they can reinforce each other. We believe that a brand is determined by culture and that the correct display of a brand will reinforce internal culture. In this blog I will assess the two topics and show you how they intertwine.

Branding

Branding is an integral part of marketing. Branding is a way to steer how the outside world perceives your company and how they interact with your company. Brands can be very personal, very classy, very edgy, very transformative, you name it - and it is out there. The flavours of different brands are endless, which is not surprising as each company is trying to stick out from the crowd by creating their own unique identity. That is why it is not surprising that marketing departments focus on creating an own “brand identity” complete with own colours, values, story lines, slogans, and other components to make an own distinctive brand.

While creating a distinctive brand is important, it is almost similarly important to communicate this brand to the outside world. You can have a beautiful brand identity, but if nobody knows about it, then it is practically useless. In other words, you need to make consumers/potential clients aware of your brand. This part of marketing is, not surprisingly, called “brand awareness” which basically focusses on all the different channels through which you are trying to inform the world out there about your brand identity.

As you can imagine, these are enormous tasks, not only to define a strong brand which really stands out and persuades consumers/potential clients, but also to then get your message out there. It is up to your marketing department to properly formulate and distribute the message that your brand wants to convey.

Culture

Turning now to culture. In its core, culture is the combination of all individual values and behaviours of the people within your company. This is in part influenced by your organisational values, but also by individual beliefs. Culture is therefore not something that you can completely control, you can only partly steer it. With every new person that joins your team, or every person that leaves your team, your culture partly changes. So, in some sense culture is something you cannot control. However, you can stimulate certain behaviours and demotivate others. This way you can move culture in the right direction.

Your culture determines a lot on how your employees communicate and behave internally, but also how they communicate and behave towards the outside world. In part, your culture therefore determines what how the outside world perceives your company and your brand. This hints towards how culture and branding are very intertwined.

The same coin

So how are culture and branding part of the same process? Well, in simple terms branding is a process which determines how you are perceived in the outside world and culture determines how your employees interact with the outside world. In essence they are therefore both part of the same process: interactions with the outside world.

An organisation is its people. I believe that branding should start with assessing your internal culture. You need to know first what your internal culture stands for before you can create a brand accordingly. Why? Simple: consistency. For example: you can create a beautiful brand identity talking about how customer-focussed your organisation is, but let’s assume that your employees are rather more focussed on creating the best products (product-focussed). If your customer interacts with your representatives, which have a different attitude than your brand advertises, this might disappoint or upset them, or even worse; it will make your brand identity questionable, unconvincing, or even unbelievable.

On the flip side, having a brand identity which does not align with the internal culture also causes some problems. You will soon find that your employees do not believe any more about the message you convey to your customers/clients and that they become unhappy about the fact that the company seems to become more and more out of touch with their own employees and the internal culture. This can lead to unhappiness, unproductivity and even with people calling in sick or ultimately leaving the company.

So, what to do?

1. Find out what your culture is.

As with all cultural projects, the first step of assessing your current culture is key. Try to use employee surveys to question your employees what they value in their work, how they feel connected to their colleagues and what motivates them to come to work. Ask them how they communicate towards one-another, if they feel free to speak up during meetings, if they value creativity, how they experience the leadership; and many other questions. Try to find out how they work (together) and what motivates them to work (together).

(optional) 2. Motivate desired behaviours/demotivate undesired behaviours

In case you notice that there are many unwanted behaviours, then you should try and motivate desired behaviours and demotivate undesired behaviours. Use workshops, brainstorming sessions and early adopters to help people see how individual and group behaviour affect the brand in a positive (or negative) way. Bring out their desire to build a strong unique culture and brand. During these sessions you should get a better uniform image of what behaviours everybody wants to motivate. This is also the moment to take the leading role and move people in the right direction to start adopting the desired behaviours.

From these sessions you should also be able to bring organisational values to life. Working bottom-up: individual behaviours can be generalized in a couple of shared attitudes, which in turn can be generalized and highlighted in organizational values.

Don’t forget that organisational values prescribe behaviours. These are things you do. Therefore, your organizational values should be actionable.

3. Create a brand identity that aligns with your culture and promote it.

Now that you have found out what your internal culture stands for, it is time to create a brand identity around it. This is the job of your marketing department, but they need to keep connecting their messaging with the internal culture. If that does not align, then you are saying one thing while doing another. Once your brand identity is established and aligned with your internal culture, feel free to promote it any way you see fit.

4. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate!

I do not understand why companies keep forgetting this step. Once you have created the right culture, the right brand identity, and you have started promoting it, then celebrate this with everybody involved! Present the results, show of the new polished brand, and how you are promoting it towards the outside world. While you are presenting this to your employees, remind them of how essential their contribution was into the cultural assessment and how they too have created their brand. It is just as much their achievement as it is the achievement of your marketing department. After all, your brand is your company, and your company is your brand. Everyone contributes to that, so every individual is key. Make your employees feel part of this journey and make them feel that they have contributed to this process. This will improve your overall culture, internal atmosphere, and connectivity amongst your employees.

In conclusion

Branding and culture are part of the same process. Culture is an integral part of branding, and you cannot create a solid brand without understanding your culture first. Therefore, I would argue that every brand project should align itself with the internal culture. If your brand does not align with your culture, then it becomes unconvincing and uncredible in the long run. Do you want to change your brand? Or do you want to fine-tune your brand identity? Start looking towards your internal culture and you will find your guidance towards how to change your brand and the overall perception of your company for the better.

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