‘Quiet Quitting’ is a new trend that started on TikTok and is very popular among young professionals or “yuppies”. It may sound like someone silently resigning from their job – but it’s actually when the employee remains in the company – but chooses to do the bare minimum amount of work required to not get fired and continuing to collect a paycheck.
The BPO sector in the country currently employs more than 1.3 million Filipinos and this is mostly composed of GenerationZ (Age 25 & under) and Millennials (Age 26 to 40). While most of these employees are happy and performing well in their job functions, A certain percentage of call center employees are most likely sold on the idea of ‘Quiet Quitting’. There may be various reasons for this behavior and we would discuss them here.
One possible cause of Quiet Quitting in employees is that they are new hires who should never have been offered the position to begin with – the product of a flawed hiring process.
These employees are a bad fit for the job and are unable to cope with the daily tasks of the job. Since they are unable to perform and some might be unwilling to learn they end up just doing the bare minimum to keep their job. They also end up applying for a job with a different call center company or just completely shifting careers.
Another type of call center employee susceptible to Quiet Quitting is Call Center agents that have been working for the company for a number of years without getting a promotion. These BPO employees are burned out / emotionally exhausted because they have been doing the same job for too long.
They feel unappreciated because of the lack of career growth within the company. And they are now just doing the bare minimum instead of pushing their limits to achieve higher stats that should help them get qualified for promotions when it becomes available. These employees also end up applying for a job with a different call center company just like those new hires unqualified for the job.
There are those call center employees who actively choose to do Quiet Quitting despite having the skills to perform the daily tasks quite well. These employees are unmotivated by career growth and is simply going to work to get paid. They may have their own reasons why they are not motivated to get ahead in their careers and it can range from personal issues at home or just a happy-go-lucky personality.
Finding the right motivation for these types of employees might be difficult but once the underlying issue is resolved these employees can go from quiet quitting to top performers in a blink of an eye.
Quiet quitting can be a problem in the BPO industry. Mainly because quiet quitting, Just like covid can be highly contagious to those other agents that are in close proximity to a Quiet Quitting employee.
When one call center agent starts complaining about the company / the job and starts ‘Quiet Quitting’ – others within listening distance may start to jump on the bandwagon. This can quickly frustrate top-performing agents – especially if they feel that others don’t work as hard but are still getting paid more or less the same. Or even worse – your engaged top performers surrender – and lower their own standards – and begin to copy the work practices & attitudes of ‘Quiet Quitting’ agents.