How To Harness Commitment and Reduce Quiet Quitting at Work

With “quiet quitting” still on the rise, 21% of employees admitting they do just the bare minimum at work and only a third of workers feeling engaged with their roles, businesses face one of the biggest productivity slumps in recent times. 

We caught up with Lesley Matile, highly experienced executive coach and host of our latest Vistage webinar Harnessing Commitment, to find out more about what leaders can do to boost employee energy, engagement and commitment at work—and why that’s so important. 

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What Does It Mean To “Harness Commitment”—And Why Is It Important?

Harnessing commitment is about engaging, energising and motivating employees to commit to their roles, take ownership of their work and drive the business forward. 

“But, on average, people only bring about 30% of their full potential to work every day,” Lesley adds. “At the bare minimum, every employee needs to do enough work to keep their job. And it’s not uncommon to see a number of people that aren’t particularly engaged with their work but are doing just enough to keep their roles.”

This might look like people holding back their ideas and energy, showing a lack of enthusiasm at tasks that are assigned to them and avoiding volunteering to take ownership of tasks and projects. 

On the other hand, when we have people who are engaged, they’ll feel inspired and motivated by their roles, tasks and relationships and are committed enough to give what’s called their “discretionary effort.” 

“Discretionary effort,” Lesley says, “is the bit that people don’t have to give but choose to give if they trust the people they’re working with, and if they feel valued and inspired. They will go that extra mile.” And, as leaders, it’s your responsibility to motivate people to bring out that discretionary effort. 

“That’s particularly true of a younger generation that wants to do work that has, in their mind, value,” Lesley says. “They also want to feel valued.” 

So, how exactly do you do that? 

How Do You Improve Commitment at Work?

“Everybody can be engaged in the right circumstances,” Lesley says. “Nobody is beyond being motivated and really committed.” And it’s the leader’s role to facilitate that. 

A good leader helps nudge employees to stop feeling like they simply need to comply with the requirements of their roles and instead feel fully committed and engaged with their tasks. In other words, helping shift their attitudes from “I have to do this for you,” to “I want to do this for me.” 

One of the key ways of doing that is noticing when people are enthusiastic, what they say they enjoy about particular tasks or projects and what they think has gone or is going well. This will give you an insight into what captures their imagination, attention and focus.

“For example, meeting new people and forming new relationships motivates me. So, if I can do work that has an element of that, that helps engage me,” Lesley shares. “But anything based on data or analysing data is an absolute turn-off for me. I find it really difficult. I’m not going to be motivated. I’ll procrastinate.”

But if you can find ways to build elements of the things that employees enjoy doing into less appealing or less motivating tasks, you can help boost engagement and commitment. “If I do have to do some of those data and analysis roles, I’m much more likely to be engaged if I can do them in the company of other people. Because I’m getting something from it that I like.” 

So, the key to nurturing committed employees is identifying their motivational drivers and weaving those into the tasks that they enjoy the least or feel least motivated by. 

These drivers can be anything, Lesley says, from progression, status and forming good relationships to leveraging unique skill sets. They’ll be unique for each individual person—and it’s the leader’s role to tease them out in the workplace. 

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How To Measure Commitment

So, how do you measure if your steps to improve engagement and commitment are working? 

First, look at the contributions people are making. 

“You should see people bringing good ideas, bringing enthusiasm, going over and above and coming up with things that you wouldn’t necessarily have expected them to because they’ve now got an opportunity to bring more of their discretionary effort and more of those hidden talents,” Lesley says. “So, almost being surprised by the contributions that people will make.” 

Another great way to measure enthusiasm and commitment is noting when people take responsibility for specific tasks and volunteer to own projects. As well as coming forward with ideas for personal development and ways to improve internal processes or procedures. 

Second, measuring commitment is about regularly checking in with employees on their progress, what’s going well for them and how they’re feeling about the role. “At the bare minimum, you should be having a one-to-one on a monthly basis with your staff,” Lesley advises. 

“That should not be just a checklist of ‘have you done this and this?’, but rather an opportunity to sit down and have those conversations around what’s been working well for them, what they’ve learned and what else would they’d like to get involved with that would help them achieve the things that matter to them.”

If you’re not already regularly doing this, it’s important not to suddenly start doing it all at once. Instead, it’s about slowly—but consistently—changing your leadership style to earn people’s trust, Lesley says. 

“We don’t commit to people we don’t trust. It’s about having that real consistent commitment to people and helping them develop and grow.” 

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