Is the buzz around quiet quitting over? Hope not, because there's still an underlying issue that companies are sweeping under the rug:

Recognize your part in potentially running off great talent.

Stop expecting your employees to go above and beyond their job description and overproduce what you’re not willing to pay them for the additional labor or aren’t providing a clear path to career growth.

It’s time to have open conversations with your people about what you can do better, and partner together on what it could look like to normalize healthy boundaries, equitable workloads, and wellness at work.

Here are a few ways that leadership at your company can help quiet quitters still stay engaged, find meaning and purpose in their roles, and dare we say, even thrive:

Up your Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) game

Focus on Equity & Inclusion actions and policies that are centered around the most historically marginalized and excluded people. This includes Black, Indigenous, People of Color (POC), women and femmes, the LGBTQIA+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent and neurodiverse people, veterans, among many more intersectional communities and identities.

Here are some questions for you to consider:

• Are you properly compensating each team member?
• Are you giving equal pay for equal work?
• How many Black, Indigenous, and people of color are in leadership outside of DEI roles?
• Are you giving clear and actionable advice and feedback for people of color and other minority power employees to advance into leadership roles, promotions, and higher pay levels?

Support their wellness

Look into ways your leaders can deepen their commitment to employees’ well-being and further establish wellness practices, so that your team members can be fully themselves, healthily handle natural stress and anxiety, and connect with their full potential while working with you.

At my company (Real You Leadership) we’ve done this through providing a learning and development stipend, starting half-day Fridays earlier this year, starting a #wellness chat channel to check in on each other and share our practices, allowing team members to create a schedule that works for them, and encouraging breaks, especially on the tough days with hard news reports and personal challenges amongst other things.

Aside from building these into your systems, you can practice today by consistently checking in on your team and asking them how they’re really doing, about life updates, and not just centering each interaction around work.

Listen to your team members and co-create the path forward

Start talking to your people and listen to understand. Validate their feelings and experiences, even if you don’t completely agree or you had better intentions than the harmful impact that they might describe. This practice can be so hard for managers to do if they’re not properly trained to give and receive quality feedback, we see it all the time. Offer more management training if you need to, but the point is to get all your leaders talking to each team member as soon as possible.

You should be having these types of check-ins and open conversations regularly, but we suggest having a “Stay Interview”. This concept is the same as an “exit interview” except you’re not collecting critical feedback about the employee’s experience when they’re already out the door and it’s too late to implement changes that would have helped them happily stay.

In these open conversations, you can ask open-ended questions like the ones found in this blog post.

Having good intentions in giving feedback sounds good in theory, but what really matters is the impact it has on your employees.

Actionable advice and critical feedback directly impacts the careers of BIPOC professionals, they absolutely need it. This “Navigating the Feedback Loop for Performance Reviews” workshop is essential for elevating BIPOC and women professionals in your company.