{"id":672147,"date":"2023-03-18T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T09:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=672147"},"modified":"2023-03-17T19:27:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T17:27:21","slug":"productivity-warning-for-businesses-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business-opinion\/672147\/productivity-warning-for-businesses-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Productivity warning for businesses in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent poll conducted by professional recruitment group Robert Walters<\/a> has found that younger employees – usually those under 30 – would not hesitate to do as little as possible if a pay increase or job progression is not on the cards.<\/p>\n

Referred to as “quiet quitting”, the poll found around half of respondents in this age range would do this, with the recruitment firm warning that this would impact productivity.<\/p>\n

These workers bring the bare minimum to their jobs, bringing no creativity, initiative or betterment to their positions or the company as a whole, it said.<\/p>\n

Added to this, more than half of managers who responded to the poll claimed that they had to take on extra work due to quiet quitters.<\/p>\n

The leading cause for the dip in output is pay, as many employees indicated that they are struggling with the increasing cost of living.<\/p>\n

“This behaviour isn’t something entirely new. There have always been less motivated individuals in the workplace.<\/span><\/p>\n

“However, the real concern here is that, unlike those few workers who tend to consciously be less productive at work, quiet<\/span> quitting is often a subconscious act borne out of frustrations toward the workplace,” said Samantha-Jane Gravett Director for Robert Walters Africa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it is easy for managers to question their employees on their lack of productivity, quiet quitting may have a lasting effect on a business’s productivity and profitability if managers cannot find the source of the problem.<\/p>\n

Despite record pay increases during 2022, especially for those getting a new job with income increasing by roughly 25%, and those remaining at their current company receiving an increase of 7-10%, these do not match the approved 18.65% increase in Eskom tariffs for the 2023\/24 financial year, or food inflation, which is around 13.4%.<\/span><\/p>\n

As wages do not match the rising cost of living, younger workers feel highly underpaid by their job and refuse to go outside the parameters of their work.<\/p>\n

“In all cases of economic hardship, it is the young workers who are low-income earners that feel the financial burden more. It is a combination of their lack of experience \u2013 exasperated further by the pandemic \u2013 that puts them in a much weaker position than their older and more experienced counterparts, particularly when trying to bargain for higher pay,” Gravett said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although employers cannot offer salaries that match inflation, softer perks such as utility vouchers, travel cards and streaming subscriptions can make a difference for prospective employees.<\/p>\n

Remote work issues\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than half of surveyed managers claimed that they had to take on extra work due to quiet quitters.<\/p>\n

Moreover, 39% of managers said that hybrid and remote work made it difficult to measure their team’s output.<\/p>\n

A further 24% said that flexibility in choosing work patterns means that there is no universal indicator for productivity, meaning that quiet quitters go unnoticed.<\/p>\n

Gravett said that quiet quitting means that other employees have to pick up the slack of their coworkers, which causes frustration among tea,m members, with committed workers at risk of burnout.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She added that if quiet quitters are benefiting from a lack of accountability via remote work, then employers should consider making office hours mandatory,<\/p>\n

“As much as we learned new ways of working in the pandemic, we also had some great working habits before Covid. These more traditional structures and systems should not be overlooked,” she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Read: Business confidence in South Africa continues to circle the drain<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Half of employees under the age of 30 are ‘quiet quitting’ as wages are not keeping up with the cost of living. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":642073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-672147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-opinion","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672147"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673765,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672147\/revisions\/673765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}