Legal expert looks at polices, workplace monitoring, approaches for disengaged employees
“Quiet quitting” is a trending topic for employers, with the term loosely referring to employees who do the bare minimum to keep their job, mainly by fulfilling their required work duties and nothing more.
Some may view quiet quitting as rejecting the hustle of workplace cultures where employees are expected to work around the clock. In fact, quiet quitting is a form of employee disengagement that can have many root causes. For managers, it’s the employee on their team who is disinclined or unmotivated to work and chooses to coast rather than leave their job outright.
Coming through the pandemic, employees and employers are continuing to navigate rapidly evolving workplace realities and expectations. This period has also seen an increasing trend of employers monitoring employee productivity by adopting new forms of electronic monitoring for both remote and office work. These factors raise some interesting legal questions.
Can employees be disciplined or fired for quiet quitting?
The legal answer is, generally, it depends – and likely no.
As long as an employee is satisfying the requirements of their role, it would be difficult for an employer to make a case for discipline or termination for just cause without a significant risk of facing a wrongful dismissal claim.
However, an employee’s contract may also specify that the employee is required to perform “other duties as assigned.” This gives management some leeway to revise an employee’s duties and work expectations as reasonably needed. An employee’s contract and the employer’s policies may also set performance expectations to track towards promotion or increased responsibilities, such that the employee is expected to increase their performance level over time.
Under these terms of employment, strictly meeting work expectations can involve meeting higher expectations over time – which in turn justifies employers taking corrective and disciplinary measures when employees fall into a holding pattern and requirements for growth, change and improvement are not satisfied.
It benefits both employers and employees for the terms of employment to be made clear from day one. Making expectations clear and known to an employee through carefully drafted contract terms and policy language can help ensure that employers are able to take corrective measures and employees aren’t taken by surprise in the process. Being upfront about expectations and role growth is important.
What policies should employers use to address quiet quitting?
The key here is to consider how policies are tied into employee motivation.
Effective motivation depends on meaningful lines of communication and on management maintaining a good understanding of what an organization’s employees value and hope to gain from their work.
Detailed performance management and promotion policies, open-door communications, and targeted performance incentives all form part of the suite of options that employer organizations may use to build a workplace culture in which employees are motivated and incidents of unacceptable quiet quitting are minimized.
At the same time, a policy is only as effective as the consistent practices that implement it. Shortfalls in implementation can risk having employees perceive the employer as failing to live up to its promises, and possibly lead to quiet quitting or even resorting to a legal claim.
It’s worth remembering management consultant and author Peter Drucker’s famous advice that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” A carefully crafted policy framework can lay the foundation for a workplace culture that motivates employees, provided that organizations consistently invest in its leadership’s implementation of those policies. Listening to your employees and showing empathy is a powerful tool to validate employees and prevent them from checking out.
Crucially, workplace policies must be paired with a top-to-bottom organizational buy-in that features regular training for performance managers and supervisors.
Can electronic monitoring of employees’ activities help prevent quiet quitting?
Electronic monitoring can be an effective tool to identify or prevent some of the most unwanted consequences of quiet quitting in the workplace, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle.
Electronic monitoring tools such as keystroke trackers, email surveillance systems and GPS devices can serve as a deterrent to employee misconduct, and employers have many justified reasons for making use of them. Some of the reasons include the protection of confidential information, maintaining cybersecurity, and ensuring that remote employees remain accountable during assigned work hours.
At the same time, electronic monitoring shouldn’t be seen as an effective motivator – and may even backfire when it comes to ensuring that the monitored work is being performed. One example is the use of battery-operated “mouse jigglers” that create the appearance of activity to mislead employer monitoring software.
The larger puzzle of quiet quitting requires careful consideration of how electronic monitoring and any other measure fits into the broader policy framework and organizational culture that an employer has designed to motivate employees and stamp out unacceptable quiet quitting in the long term.
As of Oct. 11, 2022, Ontario’s employment standards require employers in that province who use electronic monitoring to have policies informing their employees about the sorts of monitoring being used and the purposes of the information being collected.
Engaging employees
This new requirement is an opportunity for employers to take a hard look at how their electronic monitoring practices fit into their workplace culture, including the employer’s practices and policies when it comes to supporting employee well-being and the ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
At the end of the day, employers who build a culture of leadership, with policies and practices that go beyond the bare minimum for their employees, can expect more engaged employees who will go the extra mile to help organizations succeed.
Maciej Lipinski is a management-side employment and labour lawyer at KPMG Law in Toronto.
