The idea behind hiring a human resources director or manager is to gain and retain employees. The role is designed to recruit, onboard, and train new hires, manage and maintain performance, handle all the compensation and benefits, and resolve employee conflicts. Your human resources officer also ensures all staff comply with labor laws and employment standards and keep up with employee policies and procedures changes. They are responsible for the well-being of every employee within the company. But inside large companies, many employees are unpaid and often forgotten, not because the director doesn’t care, but because they are easily replaced.

Yes, you heard that right. Often, HR’s role to train you properly isn’t worth the paperwork required to retain you as a new employee. While that doesn’t align with the labor board statistics of the costs of training a new hire, it indicates what the workforce is dealing with today, namely the introduction of what is now being termed ‘quiet quitting.’

Quiet quitting is doing only the bare minimum required of the job, putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than absolutely necessary. Why would you do only the bare minimum of the job? Why would you not go out of your way to help the company? What would keep you working for an employer and do just the bare minimum? And is this really a trend? Is quiet quitting a thing? Or is it just another social media trend that will eventually die down and go away?

According to a Gallup survey of workers age 18 and older taken in June 2022, quiet quitters make up over 50% of the United States workforce, and in the global workforce, the number is even higher at over 58%. The term is credited to Bryan Creely, a corporate recruiter who first used it in a TikTok video on March 4, 2022. Bryan says why not just do the basics if you aren’t interested in climbing the corporate ladder? You keep your job, and the employer has a warm body in your space.

Okay, if you are in this position quietly quitting your job, what is your human resources director doing about it? Or are they concerned one iota about you in the first place? You would think that doing the minimum would catch the attention of the director, right? Why wouldn’t it? Because HR isn’t your friend, the HR manager isn’t there for anything more than retaining and managing employee relations, nothing more. And if you aren’t rocking the boat, if you aren’t making waves, why would they go out of their way to see how you feel in your position, or if you are making moves to remove yourself from the company because there is zero growth potential, no incentive to stay with lucrative benefit packages or compensation that at the very least gives you a sense of satisfaction doing the job you were hired to do.

Can we put all the blame on human resources? Yes, but only if management allows them to initiate raises, compensation plans, and other fringe benefits. Most companies won’t do this because they have to trust the person they put in charge of handling employee relations. Corporations will put the responsibility back on the in-line managers to review performance. This lack of understanding between the front-line managers and human resources is the shortfall of both the managers and HR. So, the shortfall in the company is at every level.

Employees are trying to get the attention of the executive directors, chief financial officers, and chief operating officers for better wages, more attention from their supervisors in their roles, and the ability to change their positions and move up through the company as they did.

But – and this is key – those positions are not available because those positions are currently occupied not soon to be let go. And those people who have the proper skill set, the right temperament, and leadership abilities will continue to be overlooked. The CEOs, CFOs, and COOs will not give up a small portion of their six or seven-figure income for the good of the company, giving it away to lower-level employees because it’s not good business. Is your human resources director, the one making somewhere between $65,000 and $85,000 a year, willing to give you a part of their salary so you can make a decent living? No. Because they already have a career that is paying them well. Why would they give that up?

Employees are figuring out that those in leadership don’t care and managers are only interested in them if they do their job, killing themselves for minimum wage so the CEO can go on a four-week vacation. Perhaps if leaders were really leading, they would cut their own salaries and increase their employee’s wages and benefit packages, ensuring the good of the company.

It’s that, or ‘quiet quitting’ will become the norm. Then, human resources manager, you and your organization will be average instead of leading the charge in your industry.