Quiet Quitting – the New Headache for Employers

Have you come across Quiet Quitting and what does it have to do with the Freelance PR market?

It’s where disengaged employees cruise along doing just enough to avoid disciplinary measures and then post about it on social media.

Quiet quitting manifests itself in a number of ways, from dialling down productivity, not attending meetings and failure to coasting on team projects and leaving early/arriving late.

It’s attracted a lot of media attention both in the HR professional media and more general news media.

It’s associated with post pandemic burn out and a feeling of meaningless. The pandemic has upended so many norms and our relationship with work is not immune.

Gallup’s mammoth State of the Global Workplace report revealed that 9% of UK workers feel excited or motivated by their work and workplace.

If one in less than of your colleagues feel motivated, how many are polishing their CV right now?

For the PR sector it’s a threat because PR professionals need to deliver a high level of emotional engagement with their work to find new ideas, to look at things differently and to work across stakeholder groups who often have competing aims.

Famously “PR is not ER” and it’s not as stressful as driving the night bus or having precarious zero hours employment to make ends meet, but it is a job that is very much “on show” in an organisation and where switching off your brain for a while can easily mean a careless comment that is published in an instant.

But do you know who will never quiet quit on you? PR Freelancers.

Freelancers have skin in the game in a way that even a PR agency doesn’t – they share the risk with their clients and they have a clear and direct incentive to perform at their best to be hired next month and the month after that.

The PR Freelancer mindset is something we’ve covered before.

The PR freelancers we talk to every day are resourceful, creative and don’t get involved in office politics and all the other little frictions that cost employers dear.

The value of PR freelancers is often undersold by freelancers themselves and undervalued by employers, but in a difficult employment market that faces a lot of uncertainty, the idea of flexible talent that has an inner engine that never stops running is a premium level consideration.

If you want flexible talent that shares your drive to succeed, then The PR Cavalry has the largest pool of Freelance PR talent there is.