What does quiet quitting say about your hiring?

It is the withdrawal of everything above the job description. The extra shift, the message answered on a Sunday, the colleague helped out at short notice, the improvement nobody asked for. The person stays, does the work, and stops doing the rest.

What it is not: resigning. And, more importantly for this discussion, it is not underperformance either. Someone doing exactly what was agreed is meeting the requirements of the role. That makes it hard to address through the usual route of objectives and appraisals, because formally nothing is wrong.

There is a second misunderstanding worth clearing up. Not everyone who stops at five o'clock is disengaged. Some of the people filed under this label are simply doing their job and holding a boundary that should have been there from the start. The difference is in the movement. Someone who has worked their contracted hours since day one is not the same as someone who spent six months volunteering for everything and then stopped.

What we do not know is how common it is. Figures circulate, but we have not checked a primary source for any of them, so we will not quote them. The question you can answer yourself is a different one: which of your own people pulled back, and how long after they started.

Usually earlier than the workplace. Someone who withdraws was normally hired on a picture the job did not live up to, and that picture is built in three places, all of them yours.

The first is the advert. It describes the role in its best version: real ownership, room for initiative, plenty of scope to develop. If the daily reality is mostly fixed routine, that is not a lie, but it is the wrong expectation, and the expectation walks in through the door with the new starter.

The second is the interview. This is where the promise becomes specific, usually from the hiring manager, in half a sentence about progression or about the new system arriving next year. Nobody writes it down, so nobody returns to it later, except the person who heard it.

The third is the first month. Someone who was handled quickly and personally throughout the process, and then waits three weeks for a laptop and a login, learns something about how much they matter. It is the same movement you see earlier with candidates dropping out, except that a person who has already started does not say no. They stay, and they do less.

We do not do retention policy and we will not pretend otherwise. What is ours is the picture you paint beforehand and the size of the gap between that picture and what people find. That is exactly what an employer brand rests on, because a brand that promises more than the organisation delivers costs you the very people it attracted.

Three things, all on the hiring side.

Describe an ordinary Tuesday. Not the mission and not the growth ambition, but what the person actually does between eight and five, including the dull part. An advert that is honest about how much of the work is routine attracts fewer people and keeps them longer. How to tell that without turning the advert grey is what recruitment content is about.

Let the candidate speak to someone currently doing the job, without a manager present, and say explicitly that they may ask what is disappointing about it. That is half an hour in your process, and it removes most of the wrong expectations before a contract exists. Where that conversation fits in your application funnel depends on how long the rest of it is.

And write down what you promised. Every commitment made in an interview about training, progression, rotas or equipment goes on a short list, and that list goes to the line manager on day one. Then the person who has to deliver on it knows what was said. It belongs with the handover we describe under screening and candidate follow-up.

Is quiet quitting the same as poor performance?

No, and that is precisely what makes it awkward. Someone doing exactly what was agreed is meeting the role as defined. There is formally nothing to manage, so the normal appraisal cycle finds no purchase. What has changed is the willingness to do anything extra, and that appears in no job description. It usually surfaces only when something breaks that used to get fixed by itself.

Can you solve it with more money?

Rarely, because pay does not change the gap between the promise and the work. Someone hired on the prospect of a specialist role who has spent two years working through the same list will not become enthusiastic again because of a rise. At best they stay longer with nothing resolved, which is the most expensive outcome for both sides.

How many people are doing this?

We do not know. Percentages circulate, but we have not verified a primary source for any of them and will not repeat them. Your own picture is more useful anyway: look at the people who joined in the past year and ask their managers who was doing noticeably less after six months than in the first weeks. It is not research, but it is about your organisation.

What if it involves someone who has been here for years?

Then it is no longer a hiring question and it is outside what we do. What we would say is this: start with the difference between what that person was promised at the time and what they got, because that conversation is far more concrete than a conversation about motivation. And make sure the next person you hire does not walk in with the same promise.

SocialFind writes job adverts and builds hiring processes, and we look at who responds and at what people are saying yes to. If you would like articles like this in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.