Creeping stagflation and a sour job market have workers clinging to their jobs — whether they like it or not.
Because workers are stuck in jobs they don’t want, they are “quiet cracking,” a damaging new turn in the employee-employer relationship that is creating even greater strain on the companies that are allowing these cracks to grow.
Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free Newsletters
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more – straight to your e-mail.
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice – straight to your e-mail.
Kiplinger’s Adviser Intel, formerly known as Building Wealth, is a curated network of trusted financial professionals who share expert insights on wealth building and preservation. Contributors, including fiduciary financial planners, wealth managers, CEOs and attorneys, provide actionable advice about retirement planning, estate planning, tax strategies and more. Experts are invited to contribute and do not pay to be included, so you can trust their advice is honest and valuable.
However, whereas quiet quitting tended to be a finite phenomenon — a disgruntled employee would eventually find a position at another company and leave — today’s economy means that jumping ship is no longer an option.
Wage growth is slowing, unemployment is likely rising, and employees aren’t willing to leave the job they have — even if it is making them miserable.
The result is quiet cracking, with employees burning out from stress and disengagement with their jobs. Work quality, team morale and trust all tank when employees feel this way, and it can spread like a disease from person to person.
One person starts turning in subpar work, and it begins to grate on their team members, who see firsthand what the bare minimum accomplishes.
Left to pick up the slack, these otherwise healthy team members burn out and begin to suffer from their own cracks.
It’s an insidious cycle that can tank even the strongest of corporate cultures.
Hiring is more difficult, too
The issue for many companies is that the solution isn’t as simple as weeding out the one rotten apple. As tough as it is for employees to find another job, it’s nearly just as difficult for a company looking to hire.
Hiring managers are being inundated with AI-generated applications, making it challenging to find qualified candidates — that is, if there is even a talent pool to look through.
In already talent-crunched industries like manufacturing and accounting, the problem of hiring is even worse. Ninety percent of accounting firms report struggling to fill vacant positions, while experts estimate that there are 20 vacant roles for every one qualified applicant in manufacturing.
Companies can’t hire, and employees can’t leave. The reality of the economy is that it’s created a stalemate between employers and employees, as both wait to see who will break first. It’s a toxic environment for all that’s dragging productivity down across the economy.
Some managers are in the dark
The issue for companies dealing with employees quietly cracking is that unless managers have their fingers on the pulse of the company culture, they oftentimes don’t know what they’re up against.
Measurements designed to assess satisfaction and engagement often fail to capture what’s more critical and pertinent today: alignment, especially as it relates to company goals and impact.
Satisfaction and engagement used to be significant components of corporate cultural health — something we saw reflected in the hiring trends of the times.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, for example, companies began to take employee health seriously, driven by a strong economy and a competitive job market.
To attract quality employees, who had more power to be selective in who they worked with, companies began offering workplace perks like in-office gyms and espresso bars. These were drivers of employee satisfaction — perks that made employees happier.
And then we had a crash
The financial crash changed things. Employees lost the upper hand, and austerity measures meant companies could offer less. Rather than satisfaction, engagement became the metric that could assess team functionality.
Now, spurred by remote work during the pandemic and the Great Resignation, companies have begun to look at mission alignment to assess the health of a workforce they can’t always see.
With a power balance that’s more evenly split between employers and employees, the question of how to maintain mission alignment and help employees feel connected to something bigger than themselves has become an ongoing dialogue.
Employers need to check in regularly
Frequent assessment is a way for companies to start creating that dialogue by understanding how their employees are feeling and trying to discern any patterns that emerge as a result.
Perhaps midlevel managers are satisfied, but entry-level workers aren’t; maybe customer-facing employees understand their role in the company’s broader mission, while backend employees don’t.
Looking for expert tips to grow and preserve your wealth? Sign up for Adviser Intel (formerly known as Building Wealth), our free, twice-weekly newsletter.
With assessment, companies can shift. One health care organization, for example, discovered through its pulse surveys that its frontline workers were starting to become disgruntled.
Digging a level deeper, they realized that administrators being able to work from home was behind growing feelings of disparity and distrust. The company called administrators back to the office, pushing for leadership to model the company’s cultural values.
Repairing these cracks in the workforce must be a two-sided process, led by managers and leaders who can identify those workers who are disengaged.
In this current stalemate, it is the company that must be willing to break the ice, engaging in honest conversations with employees to understand whether they’re being challenged, whether they’re well-suited for their role and what their goals are. They need to meet the company’s goals and needs.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, nor is it a company-first approach. The dynamics of the labor market mean that leaders have to be willing to negotiate to keep their workforce happy and maintain alignment in an economy where the margins for error are slim.
Quiet cracking can be stopped — before it breaks everything.
