Quiet Quitting
“Let me ask you a question, Joanna. What do you think of a person who only does the bare minimum?” (Stan, Office Space, 1999.)
What is quiet quitting?
Since August, quiet quitting has become one of the biggest memes of 2022. It's also the focus of one of the worst statistical misreprentations I've encountered all year. As you'll see, I'm not trying to be dramatic.
People have a lot to say about quiet quitting. Some define it as doing the bare minimum required for one's job. Some emphasize the setting of boundaries that create a better work-life balance. And some focus on the psychological elements, describing a sense of disengagement from work and/or the belief that people shouldn't let themselves be defined by their jobs.
Here's a working definition that draws together some commonly articulated themes: Quiet quitting is a form of disengagement that causes employees to put less time and effort into their work. In many cases, people do the minimum necessary in order to remain employed. Typically the goal is to reduce stress and achieve a healthier work-life balance.
Admittedly, that's an employee-centric definition. Employers are more likely to view quiet quitting as a kind of slacking off rather than the satisfaction of minimum requirements. At the same time, some employees reject the phrase "quiet quitting", since, in their view, what actually happens isn't "quitting" but simply the development of healthier attitudes toward work. In short, my definition may be sufficient for this newsletter, but it's not definitive.
Is quiet quitting on the rise?
Some observers have described quiet quitting as a new trend, prompting a backlash from those who recognize that it's just a new name for an old phenomenon. Either way, there's a tendency now to view quiet quitting as a growing trend, thanks to the results of an annual Gallup survey, released on September 6, showing that over 50% of American workers can be described as quiet quitters. This percentage is higher than what Gallup has reported in recent years.
The Gallup findings have already spurred countless discussions on social media, on talk shows, and in news reports for business-minded people (Bloomberg News, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, etc.) as well as general audiences (Washington Post, NPR, NBC, Fox News, etc.). Naturally, I was curious. Gallup is a respected source of polling and survey data, so when I looked at the data, I expected to learn more about how much quiet quitting has been increasing lately. What I found instead is that enormous, honking statistical misrepresentation I alluded to earlier. There's an unbridgeable gap between what the survey shows and the way the results are described in the media.
The Gallup Q12 survey
Since 2000, Gallup has administered their Q12 Employee Engagment Survey to thousands of American adults each year. This year, 15,091 people were surveyed.
The survey consists of the following 12 statements. Respondents rate each statement on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree).
1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
I had a lot of questions about this survey, but searching for answers on the Gallup website reminded me that it's a for-profit company. Even the link "View the Science Behind the Questions" leads to slick marketing, and very, very little science. Methodological details about the survey are oddly scattered across several web pages, and when you gather them together you find that a lot is missing.
Concerns about survey content
Whatever you think it means to be engaged at work, I assume that at least some of the 12 statements make sense to you. For example, I particularly like statements 5 through 8, because, for me, they capture some key elements of engagement. Other statements seem more questionable. I'm troubled by statement 2, for example, because I've known more than one highly engaged K-12 teacher who feels under-resourced. Statement 8 seems problematic too, because most of us know someone who considers their job important but has nonetheless grown sick of it. And, when I read statement 9, I thought of people who remain highly engaged in spite of (or perhaps because of) their sense that they're the only one at work who really cares.
What I'm suggesting here is that the Q12 may not consistently measure engagement. When I tried to figure out how and why Gallup chose these 12 statements, I found two distinct rationales.
Gallup's first rationale is some fluffy, pop psychology in which the first two statements are described as "basic needs" that must be met before others can be addressed, with the highest needs, statements 11 and 12, corresponding to personal growth. If you've taken a psychology class, you may recognize Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs here (apparently Maslow is used a lot in business/management training). Gallup even recreates a version of Maslow's triangle in several places on their website, although they don't give him credit. Unlike Maslow, it's hard to make a case for Gallup's choice and ordering of the 12 needs. (Don't statements 3 and 7 reflect "basic needs" too?) In all, what you see here is a minor act of plagiarism (you're supposed to credit authors when you use their ideas) combined with some fluffy bull***t.
Gallup's second rationale for their survey is that the statements are actually "12 needs that managers can meet to improve your employees' productivity." Gallup claims that these 12 needs have been scientifically verified, and that there's research linking each one to greater productivity at work. I assume (though there's no way of knowing) that the reference to scientific verification means that Gallup used appropriate survey construction methodology. But, even if they did, there's a bit of sleight-of-hand here, because productivity and engagement are not the same thing. Lots of disengaged, unhappy workers are forced to maintain high levels of productivity (Amazon is famous for that). At the same time, some workers love their jobs but may not be skilled enough yet to be very productive.
Gallup itself, in the report that's most frequently cited by journalists, refers to their survey as measuring "engagement." There's no mention of "productivity" or any synonym for that term in the report. And yet, as stated on their website: "Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace."
So, what exactly does the survey measure? Hard to say, because Gallup doesn't reveal much more than what I've described here. In videos on their website, there are references to links between the statements and absenteeism, turnover, and even employee safety, all of which may be related to engagement but certainly aren't the same thing. It looks like a survey on predictors of productivity that's being pitched as an engagement survey.
The concern I've raised here is relatively minor in itself, but it's connected with more serious ones.
Concerns about survey coding
Gallup combines responses to the 12 statements and classifies each survey respondent as "engaged", "not engaged", or "actively disengaged." What do those categories mean? Engaged employees are described as "highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work". Not engaged employees are said to be "psychologically unattached to their work and company." Actively disengaged employees "aren't just unhappy at work – they're resentful that their needs aren't being met".
Conceptually, the distinctions between these categories make sense, but difficulties arise when you imagine actually classifying people. For example, if you're "highly involved and enthusiastic", Gallup calls you engaged. If you're "psychologically unattached", Gallup calls you not engaged. Where's the boundary? Aren't there a lot of people who fall somewhere between those two categories? Gallup doesn't explain how survey responses are used to assign people to each category. All they say is that they use a "proprietary formula founded on extensive research."
Researchers typically provide information on survey construction and coding. The only ones who hide it are either unscrupulous or being proprietary – i.e., offering their survey as a commercial product, as Gallup does. In this instance, Gallup is secretive to the point of making it hard to interpret their findings. If you want to label all employees as either engaged, not engaged, or actively disengaged, fine, that might be a reasonable approach. I don't think human beings are that simple, but I'm willing to accept this trichotomy if you explain how people get assigned to each category.
On now to the topic of statistical misrepresentation. This is where things get ugly.
Concerns about interpretation of results
In the report most frequently cited, Gallup states that "quiet quitters make up at least 50% of the U.S. workforce". This is a reference to employees who are labeled as not engaged or actively disengaged, and it's the reason you see so many stories about "half" or "at least half" or "more than half" or "roughly half" or "50%" of American workers being quiet quitters. The media have also picked up on Gallup's observation that the percent of engaged workers has been declining. Here's how Gallup summarizes it:
"After trending up in recent years, employee engagement in the U.S. saw its first annual decline in a decade -- dropping from 36% engaged employees in 2020 to 34% in 2021. This pattern has continued into early 2022, as 32% of full- and part-time employees working for organizations are now engaged..."
This summary tells us something about the results for "engaged" employees, although, as I noted earlier, it's not clear how survey responses translate into this category, and it's not clear what's being measured in the first place. Moreover, the time-related changes noted here are quite small. The figure below presents data for the two extreme groups, "engaged" and "actively disengaged". (The middle group, "not engaged", isn't included here; Gallup doesn't provide a figure containing all three groups.)
Here are four things to notice about this figure:
1. The differences from year to year are small. For instance, for the engaged group (the upper line), that sharp-looking drop from 2020 to 2022 is only 4%.
2. Gallup doesn't report whether any of the changes are significant or not. If they're not significant, then they don't represent genuine change but rather fluctuations that could be attributed to chance and/or measurement error, biased sampling, etc.
3. Even if the changes since 2020 are significant, the obvious explanation would be the pandemic. One might then ask why the changes aren't larger. People are sick of working at home. They're tired of their home office, they're experiencing Zoom fatigue, and they miss face-to-face interactions with their colleagues. Why doesn't Gallup show an even greater decline in engagement? (Perhaps declining engagement among some people has been offset by greater engagement among those who enjoy remote work. If this were true, then Gallup's survey isn't very informative, because the results collapse across these groups rather than teasing out two distinct trends.)
4. Exactly 50% of respondents are missing from this figure – i.e., the "not engaged" group. Given that they're the middle group, we need to understand who they are. Gallup lumps them together with "actively engaged" people and then refers to the combination of the two groups (68% of respondents) as quiet quitters. However, if the people in the middle group are actually engaged, just not wildly enthusiastic, then you wouldn't call them quiet quitters; rather, you'd reserve that label for the remaining 18% (i.e., the "actively disengaged" group). In short, depending on how the "not engaged" group is defined, the data either show that 68% of workers are quiet quitters, or that 18% are. In other word, either the majority of workers are quiet quitters, or the majority aren't. This renders the main findings uninterpretable.
Concerns about financial incentives
Gallup refers to the "not engaged" groups as "psychologically unattached", but that's just a subjective description. How these people actually responded to the survey is unknown. All we know for sure is that they're a middle group, somewhere in between "engaged" and "actively disengaged."
It's suspicious that Gallup lumped them together with the actively disengaged group but didn't explain how or why. I find that suspicious because Gallup actively markets the Q12 as a "management change tool" designed to increase productivity, and their decision to collapse the two lower groups drastically increased the percentage of quiet quitters. Which would be better for sales: Reporting that 68% of employees are quiet quitters, as Gallup did, or reporting that quiet quitting is only a problem among 18%?
Conclusion
In spite of the deluge of news reports and social media posts on the recent uptick in quiet quitting, there's no clear evidence of change. We don't know exactly what Gallup's G12 survey measures, we don't know how people were assigned to categories such as "engaged", and thus we don't know which of those categories can be equated with quiet quitting. And, even if you thought the survey was perfectly designed and coded, the results show only tiny changes across a 20 year period.
If I trusted the Gallup survey, my conclusion would be that worker engagement has remained remarkably consistent since 2000. Look again at the figure above. If you increased the maximum value on the y-axis to, say, 60%, you'd end up with two flat lines.
An afterthought
"The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care." (Peter, Office Space, 1999.)
I blame Gallup for the way Q12 results have been publicly misrepresented, because Gallup itself misrepresented those results. I would describe their methodology and their marketing as cynical as well. In promotional materials, they boast that their survey measures key predictors of productivity. Thus, if a company purchases the survey, administers it more than once to its employees, and makes changes that increase their scores, greater productivity is likely to follow. But this isn't the same as greater engagement, even if some of the survey statements do tap into that dimension. Looking back at statements 2 and 6, for example, you could give your workers better tools and "encourage" their development, but that won't necessarily make them more engaged. They might actually feel less engaged and more pressured, because you've increased the expectations for performance.
Focusing solely on productivity isn't the best way to boost productivity – or engagement – though it can be an efficient way of making employees miserable. This will sound naïve on my part, but what Gallup should've done is to create a survey that clearly measures engagement, and market it in the hopes that employers would be satisfied merely to know how engaged their employees are. Any employer who discovered low engagement might then take steps to enable a happier, more engaged team. Greater productivity would naturally ensue, and everyone would be happy. (I told you this would sound naïve…)
Thanks for reading!