S4 E1: The Loud Quitter

This week, Tom Jones and Terry Cook join Pete Wright to talk about a topic that’s making waves in the corporate world and setting Human Resources departments on their toes: an audacious, unapologetic, and strikingly public phenomenon known as “Loud Quitting.” The trend sees employees actively cause issues and voice their dissatisfaction before leaving a job. This podcast explores the loud quitting phenomenon and its implications for organizations.

With remote and hybrid work models becoming more prevalent, we examine whether loud quitting is exacerbated when teams are dispersed versus working in offices. Employees who loudly quit often perceive unfairness and feel actively disengaged, which quickly damages morale. Behind loud quitting can lie deeper issues related to company culture, inclusivity, and adapting to change.

Managers play a crucial role in mitigating loud quitting. Techniques like stay interviews, soliciting honest feedback, and having more conversations to avoid assumptions can provide insight into problems. However, sometimes an employee truly wants to quit, and recognizing when to let them go avoids being held hostage to one person. Proper manager training is critical.

Legally, managers cannot fire someone solely for complaining. Loud quitting may reveal bullying, harassment, or other issues requiring HR intervention. However, building a case with documentation can be prudent if an employee damages the team.

Ultimately, loud quitting signals areas where organizations need improvement. Addressing perceptions of unfairness, lack of inclusivity, unhappiness with leadership, and difficulties adapting to change can strengthen company culture and retention. With careful listening and measured responses, managers can handle loud quitting in a way that benefits both employees and organizations.

• • AIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277, online, or via email at helpline@aimnet.org for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

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Transcript:

Pete Wright:
Welcome to Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People who Love HR. From AIM HR Solutions on TruStory FM, I’m Pete Wright. This week, we’re talking about a topic making waves in the corporate world and setting human resource departments on their toes, an audacious, unapologetic, and strikingly public phenomenon known as loud quitting. Unlike the quiet quitting that we’ve talked about before where employees quietly slip away, loud quitting takes center stage. It’s the act of not just leaving a job but orchestrating a grand exit, voicing discontent and sometimes causing turmoil even before the final curtain call. It’s not just about quitting, it’s about making a statement, and today we dissect what this means for organizations and HR professionals alike. To help out, Terry Cook, our senior vice president of employer services and Tom Jones, our very own attorney, specializing in labor and employment matters, join me to share what you need to know about the slamming doors of the loud quitter. Tom and Terry, it’s been so long. It’s like the whole band is back together.

Tom Jones:
I know. It’s great.

Terry Cook:
It is.

Pete Wright:
You guys, I’d like to start with a statement. I have prepared a statement. I’ve been having some thoughts over our break about quiet quitting, which I think may help to lead us into this conversation on loud quitting, if I may. Do I have your permission? All right. It strikes me that over the last several months since we have gone quiet, the media has run amuck with quiet quitting as a buzzword, and it’s out of control. It could very well be that looking at employees who are doing their jobs, being compensated as they were agreed to be compensated for it, are being labeled as quiet quitters. They’re labeled as quiet quitters because they are, quote, “not inspired.” These are good people. These are good people, and just because they don’t bleed your company colors the way you might think they should, that doesn’t mean you’re not getting the best out of them.
Let them do their jobs. They’re not quiet quitting. Just stop it. Business Insider, I’m looking at you. This is bananas. We did a whole episode on quiet quitting, and I think we covered the complexities of quiet quitting, that there might be quiet people doing their jobs well and they don’t wear a lot of logos, that doesn’t mean they’re on their way out the door. It just means they’re doing their job, being paid for it. Today we’re talking about the opposite. I am so curious how this has happened. This loud quitting phenomenon has taken over social media to the point where you both are here doing an episode on it. Tell me what you’re thinking about loud quitting, and I should give you the opportunity to rebuke any of my opening statement on quiet quitting. Who would like to go first?

Tom Jones:
Well, I’ll just make one quick statement, then Terry can take over. But one of the things Terry and I were talking about beforehand was that you look at the numbers. The numbers say 50% are doing quiet quitting, and almost 19% are doing loud quitting, but 50% is half the workforce. For neither of us, that struck us as a realistic number. It seems very, very high. I don’t know what the number is. I have no idea where it belongs, but it seemed very, very high.

Pete Wright:
But I think this is what gets us, this is why it’s a point of contention because it is such a high number that it just screams absurdity. It screams that people who are doing their jobs are being mislabeled as quiet quitters for one reason or another. Terry?

Terry Cook:
No, I agree. I think as Tom said, we were just having the conversation, and it does seem like a high number when you’re taking quiet quitting and loud quitting, which leaves you less than 30% of the people that’s supposedly like being at work every day.

Pete Wright:
Those are all the managers who are complaining about either quiet quitters or loud quitters.

Terry Cook:
That’s right.

Tom Jones:
One interesting thing that’s come out of the pandemic is this incredible focus on work again as a activity, working on the concerns about work, about employees, about the changing dynamics of control in the workplace in a way that we haven’t thought about in decades. Really, it seems like haven’t talked about work in a long, long time, but now everyone’s focused on setting, workplace, all these trends. They’re always looking for some new trend, some new development-

Pete Wright:
Right, something to publish.

Tom Jones:
Right, and so I don’t know.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Is this really a new trend, first of all, or did we just find a buzzword to attach to it? So set the stage. Terry, I’ll ask you first, set the stage for loud quitting and how it came to this show, and then we’ll dig into some of the detail.

Terry Cook:
Sure. So loud quitting is really a person acting out, very actively disengaged, somebody that wants to express their disgust with their job or the company to anybody that will listen; whether that be to co-workers to try to get them upset and affect their productivity, or whether they just go right to TikTok or social media, Instagram, anywhere else where they can get an audience of people that are listening to them talk about all of their complaints about their job and/or the workplace, their manager. So I think that has started to happen.
A lot, as you said, Pete could contribute to that. One is, people like an audience. So if they think they can have the audience on social media or in the workplace, they know that they’re going to get the attention that they’re seeking. Two, it certainly could be the company’s fault. Maybe this person was trying to raise concerns quietly at first, and nobody listened and they felt like, “Okay, now I need the audience. Now I need to make sure my co-workers know so that we can get some reaction from the company, or maybe the general public needs to know about my company so that I can see results.” It could really be a combination of a lot of things, I’m sure.

Pete Wright:
We do have a word for that, though, isn’t it? It’s whistleblower. If you’re at that point-

Terry Cook:
Yep.

Pete Wright:
Right?

Terry Cook:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Aren’t you in a different class?

Terry Cook:
If it’s legitimate, yeah.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.

Terry Cook:
If it’s legitimate, and I think we talked about this with the quiet quitting, it is important to check on the engagement of your workforce because the labor market’s tough. It’s hard to replace people that could make somebody maybe feel more empowered to speak up because they know that they’ll be able to turn around and find a job someplace else if this employer takes action against them. But it could be the employer just not listening and they feel like there’s strength in numbers. So if I bring a bunch of my co-workers forward with me, the company’s not going to have a choice but to listen to my concerns. So it’s certainly not all to be blamed on the person making the complaints. It could be a combination, I guess, of many things.

Tom Jones:
The other thing that connects to that, I think there’s been a tremendous union drive over the last few years, be it Amazon, TJ’s, Trader Joe’s, a variety of different stores and businesses. So I think there’s a little bit more of a cultural shift in which there’s an awareness that maybe as Terry was saying about strength in numbers. If multiple people speak up and make the point and they do it on social media, maybe they’re not going to go as far as organizing a union, but they want to have their voice heard. So then the question really becomes, how will companies respond to that? Because you can’t keep losing employees. You’ve got to hold on to your employees.
If you constantly lose your employees, you look at what’s the culture of that workplace? People are going to put information out on the glass doors of the world or the Indeeds or all the other job sites to say, “This place is a great place to work or a poor place to work, and here’s why.” Companies need to be able to get ahead of that and I think figure out what’s the way to… “When you come forward with a complaint as an employee, how do we respond? Do we listen to you? Maybe we can’t do everything because everything’s impossible, but we at least listen and take steps to show that these are concerns.” We understand that maybe it’s money, maybe it’s working conditions, maybe it’s benefits, maybe it’s hours. Who knows what it might be? But there’s some way to respond to people out there that is necessary.

Terry Cook:
More studies are showing that the company culture is what people are focusing on. More and more of the people coming out of college looking for work, but even people that have been in the workplace for years, there’s just been this focus on company culture and finding somebody that really appreciates you. So I do think that’s part of what Tom’s referring to as well.

Pete Wright:
You guys are in the center of the feedback of membership at AIM. I’m curious how often you hear instances from members that indicate there is a loud quitting situation that is potentially damaging for the organization. Is it as high amongst the membership as going by the Gallup Research or the Business Insider articles would indicate?

Tom Jones:
Terry and I work on the helpline, which is the phone line where members call in and ask for insights and information about particular laws. It’s hard to see it that high. Then maybe they don’t come to us for those questions, which is a possibility as well. They might go somewhere else or just keep it to themselves.

Pete Wright:
I can’t imagine going to anybody else than you guys, Tom. I can’t imagine. What world is that [inaudible 00:09:45] We do not live in that world.

Tom Jones:
They might keep it to ourselves, though terry does a great deal of recruiting, so they may actually be a little more open with her than they would with me ’cause I tend to do more of the compliance stuff. But the reality is I don’t think the numbers are… you don’t hear it as that high.

Terry Cook:
Yeah. No, I don’t think it’s a new term either to Pete, your earlier comment, I think employees being upset or complaining, it might not have been called loud quitting before, but it’s been in existence. So I do not think it’s a new concept for human resources departments. So they may not be calling with, “Oh, my goodness, there’s a brand new thing going on here called loud quitting-

Pete Wright:
Have you heard of this, Terry?

Terry Cook:
… and I need you to solve it.”

Tom Jones:
We should come up with a podcast naming the next new trend.

Pete Wright:
Yes,

Tom Jones:
That’s a good one.

Pete Wright:
That should be our end-of-year review is, what is the next big trend-

Tom Jones:
Exactly.

Pete Wright:
… that’s going to sweep through HR?

Tom Jones:
Exactly.

Pete Wright:
Let me ask the question in a different way. Is loud quitting mitigated at all by organizations with increased work-from-home programs or the other way, I guess, is loud quitting exacerbated right now by this current trend to rework teams that have for a long time now been working separately? Could this be a result of people working together all of a sudden again?

Terry Cook:
I guess it could be.

Pete Wright:
Some of it.

Terry Cook:
I think some of the articles I’ve read is also that some of these complaints that are coming up are because people are very angry they have to go back into the office. So it’s almost like the reverse. They wanted to be back home, and so it’s not about being together, it’s about physically having to go back to the office.

Tom Jones:
Some of the stress I think you hear from the big cities like a San Francisco, New York, maybe Boston, other places, a lot of businesses have a great deal of real estate and they want that real estate occupied and with the workers. If the workers refuse to go back, you see stories about San Francisco being emptied out as a result of workers not wanting to be downtown. So that could be part of the stress within the management and labor as well, within management and workers is that, “We want you here. We want to do more things at least a few days a week. We want you downtown,” and they’re saying no.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, that’s part of the challenge I wonder is the massive erupting ideological gap between management and senior management, CEOs, as the voice of this, “You’ve got to come back to work,” crusade and the people who are really feeling good about where they are. That seems to be, when it feels like that’s the thing to look out for, and I wonder how that plays into strategy for HR teams in terms of recommendations for internal communications, how you handle communications to teams probably matters. What Facebook you put behind these messages probably matters just what the natural divide is between senior leadership and teams. So let’s talk then a little bit about what some of these issues are and how HR pros listening to this can craft a response to loud quitting trends.

Tom Jones:
I think one of the points Terry made earlier about listening to your workforce and trying to engage with them, because one of the issues you do hear a lot is about disengagement, which could be called separation or isolation or whatever the term might be. So figuring out how you’re going to engage, which is listening to your employees in a meaningful way seems like a time well spent to create that strategy to begin with. If you’re struggling getting people to come to work, if you’re struggling getting to recruit, you’re struggling with any… or people are quitting and they’re quitting in a loud boisterous way, it would seem that you’ve got to figure out… Exit interviews might be one simple thing, but people don’t always tell the truth and they’re heading out the door. They just might tell you what you want to know just to get away from you. Then you’ve got these other challenges about how can you keep your existing workforce? Opinion surveys, maybe that works, but maybe there’s got to be some new different way to listen that we haven’t really fully developed yet.

Terry Cook:
I think people are starting to do stay interviews as far as extending the exit interview concept. Like Tom said, if somebody’s out the door, they may or may not bother to talk to you, but a stay interview, talking to people about what it is that they do like about their job, about their workplace, what suggestions they might have, what they want to talk about. Again, it’s opening the communication line. The other thing that Tom referred to as well is some people become disengaged because they’ve tried to make concerns or complaints and they’re not listened to. So a manager or supervisor knows somebody’s complaining, ignores it and figures, “Well, I can ignore it, it’ll go away.”
Instead, they start to get louder when all they had to do was either listen to the person or get human resources involved and just bring that person in and just say, “Listen, I understand you have some concerns. I’ve been hearing it from your coworkers, or I’ve been hearing it from your manager or supervisor. What is it that’s concerning you? What kind of solutions do you have? Don’t just bring all your problems to us. Let’s talk about how you see everything getting resolved to the point where you’re happy and some of your co-workers are happy if you feel like they’re also complaining.”

Tom Jones:
Excellent point.

Pete Wright:
But Terry, I shouldn’t have to do your job.

Terry Cook:
Never, Pete.

Pete Wright:
You can hear-

Terry Cook:
Yeah-

Pete Wright:
… when-

Terry Cook:
You can’t read their minds-

Pete Wright:
You can’t read their minds.

Terry Cook:
But yes, you’re right.

Pete Wright:
But if they’re more comfortable complaining because that’s the hallmark of a loud quitter, at what point do you have strategies as managers, line managers, department managers? How do HR managers train up the management ranks on dealing with the people who are obstructionists to their own best interests?

Terry Cook:
Yeah, and it is training. It’s training, to your point, training your managers and supervisors. A lot of it is, we’ve talked about this in past podcasts, people always promote somebody that might be good technically at their job, but they’re not giving them the management skills to be good at being a manager. Part of that is listening. Part of that is open communication. Part of that is being responsive to your workforce. It’s not just pretending that nothing’s happening because it’ll go away. So I do, I think a lot of it, to your point, is training. It’s talking to people about how you do handle it. I think in the last few years especially, we’ve seen a lot on the media about people wanting to be heard, people wanting to be recognized, people wanting to be feeling inclusive in their work environment. I think what we’re talking about is potentially happening out there when people are not responding and listening is obviously completely against what they’re looking for.

Tom Jones:
Quiet quitting is different than, I think, turnover rates. A turnover rate is, I actually leave the company, and I haven’t seen too, too much data on what those rates are. I don’t if you have, Terry, on what actual turnover rates are, but that would be a real indicator. If my company were facing, I don’t know, 20, 25% turnover, I’d probably be quite worried. It was facing two or 3% turnover, that’s life.

Pete Wright:
That’s pretty normal. Yeah.

Tom Jones:
People look for new jobs. They get new jobs or family circumstances or whatever, they transition. So that would seem like something you’d want to dig deeper in on. What’s going on with the company? Is there people actually leaving? To your very early point about quiet quitting, people are just doing their job and they’re not all, “Rah, rah, rah,” ’cause they’re just doing their job.

Pete Wright:
They’re quietly working.

Tom Jones:
Exactly.

Pete Wright:
That’s okay.

Tom Jones:
That’s right. They’re-

Terry Cook:
They’re doing their job.

Pete Wright:
Yes, right.

Tom Jones:
They’re answering the phone. They’re making the sales, they’re putting the pieces together. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do, and the companies thrives because of that.

Terry Cook:
I think there’s a lot of things you can do. I think that people want to be heard. People want some kind of response from a company. They know they have options. They know what they want because of the last three years have shown them that they can be hybrid or they can be remote. If they feel like nobody’s listening to what they want, they know the labor market, they may have to go find something someplace else. The economy has changed significantly where some people might be speaking up because they need more money to pay their bills. A company’s also suffering because their business is down and trying to figure out how to keep their doors open, their people employed, but also make sure that they have a way to live their lives and pay their bills.
So I think there’s a lot going on at the same time right now. I think there’s a lot coming at people that are working. There’s a lot coming at people that are managers and businesses. So the loud quitting, the quiet quitting, all of that, as you said at the beginning, there are labels that have been assigned to things that have probably been going on for many years. It’s just they’re getting different attention now, and there’s maybe a little bit more added to it in the actions of the people at work because they feel like they’re able to do it.

Pete Wright:
For the employee that would be characterized as a loud quitter, the employee that is troublesome to the organization, to morale, to the teams, is there a legal intervention that’s available? We don’t go around just firing people for being annoying on the job, but what is the-

Tom Jones:
Hopefully.

Pete Wright:
Hopefully, they’re happier than that, but what role does the law play in mitigating quiet quitting?

Tom Jones:
That’s a struggle in a lot of states, you think about harassment or discrimination actions. So if that occurs, if a manager is all of a sudden targeting a member of a protected class based on race, age, sex, religion, something like that, then disability status, then that becomes a legal issue. But from what I’ve been reading about this, that isn’t necessarily the case. Most of these cases, bullying is not illegal in most states, which is probably closer to where it would be. But if someone’s abusing co-workers by yelling at them and telling them… abusing them in all sorts of different ways, perhaps, but they could be a complaint. But I haven’t seen too much legal out there yet on this issue. I don’t know. Terry, have you?

Terry Cook:
No, I think one of the things when we do talk to members about it, you can’t just randomly fire somebody for just complaining or making noise. You really have to look into it. A lot of times we hear, “Well, there’s employment-at-will, I’ll just terminate anybody I want,” and it exists. But there’s other laws that go ahead of it usually. So you want to make sure you’re making a case for any type of termination. So again, it’s about listening, talking it out, finding out what’s going on, finding out if there is a solution and getting to the solution together. Because I think ideally, people that have invested time, both the employee invested in the company and the company investing time and training and getting the employee up to speed, they don’t necessarily want the end result to be somebody leaving.

Tom Jones:
I think one of the other struggles you see as we’re talking about this is that for a lot of managers, they’re juggling a million different balls at once. They’ve got to deal with productivity. They’ve got to deal with the general management, and now there’re being this other idea thrust upon them that they’re now going to have to be a part of keeping people happy within the organization, retaining workers in a way that perhaps they hadn’t previously done. So you’re putting, I think, a lot of pressure on managers as well, the frontline managers, what I’m talking about is saying that we want them very alert to what trends they’re seeing within their departments. We want them to be a open door to listening to people as they come forward. We want them to be able to go to HR and craft a strategy to try and help hold folks there apart from doing their job, it’s a lot for a lot of managers too, I think. I don’t know to what extent some of the low-level frontline managers are part of the quiet quitters or loud quitters.

Pete Wright:
Well, I was wondering that at what point, who makes the call when the manager is the issue?

Terry Cook:
Yeah.

Tom Jones:
I think that’s a real challenge for companies too, is that because a lot of companies are trying to run lean operations-

Terry Cook:
Right.

Tom Jones:
… and the leaner you run the operation, the fewer managers there are, so I have only Terry to go to. I’m one of 30 people, she’s going to get overwhelmed at some point ’cause she’s got to do her regular job plus all this other responsibility.

Pete Wright:
We have talked through in past episodes this idea of cross-training, making sure you don’t get leadership stranded. Talk through that and how that applies in a case like this, Terry.

Terry Cook:
Yeah. So cross-training, if you have somebody that’s super talented and they’re making a big deal out of everything and anything, and they’re one of the loud quitters and you don’t have anybody to do their job, then some people almost feel like they’re held to a restriction of sorts because they’re not able to replace that person’s talent so now they can’t take action and puts them in a very difficult situation. So if you’re looking at your workforce and cross-training your workforce, even if somebody can’t do somebody’s full job, at least you know that there’s somebody that can step in until you’re able to hire somebody to replace that person. Because sometimes, let’s face it, you’re asking whether people should legally terminate, sometimes there’s a scenario where on both sides it’s just not a fit anymore. You don’t want to be forcing somebody to stay just because they have the technical skills when you know that they don’t want to be there anymore, and you really don’t want somebody there that doesn’t want to be there anymore.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Terry Cook:
So being able to understand that, but also be able to be proactive as a company and making sure that you have some type of person that can at least do a temporary backfill until you’re able to replace them, the cross-training piece would be very, very important; time-consuming, but important.

Pete Wright:
I have one more question, and it’s about this idea of office environment, and we’re talking about these individual loud quitters, but Terry, you brought up office culture. I’m wondering how far office culture goes by creating more opportunities for the teams to bond, to be together, to learn more about one another that can go toward softening the overall environment that would otherwise lead toward loud quitting.

Terry Cook:
I think that’s a really good point because as you mentioned earlier, there’s still hybrid workforces. There’s still some remote, there’s still some mix of people coming in. It’s important to make sure everybody’s engaged. Everybody knows each other. Everybody knows how to communicate with each other so that nobody does feel left out and they don’t feel included in their workforce regardless of what type of work they’re doing, remote, hybrid, or in person, just somebody that establishes that culture where everybody finds a way to be heard.

Pete Wright:
This is not a thing about loud or quiet quitting, it’s about not losing people on the job-

Terry Cook:
It is.

Pete Wright:
… right in front of you, not losing.

Terry Cook:
Nobody wants that. But I think everybody, to some of your earlier points, everybody’s made a lot of adjustments, whether it’s companies or employees over the last three years. I think everybody’s finding a way to live in that new workforce and the new work world. Everybody’s probably just settling in and different paces and trying to understand the best way to build the best work environment.

Pete Wright:
When’s the last time either of you were tempted to loud quit? Terry, I know you’ve got one. Come on.

Terry Cook:
Me personally?

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Terry Cook:
No.

Pete Wright:
Oh, I believe [inaudible 00:26:10]

Tom Jones:
No.

Terry Cook:
No, I like what I do. I do. I like [inaudible 00:26:10]

Tom Jones:
Actually, that was the context we had before. Terry and I were talking about 50% of the people at AIM would they want to quit?

Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.

Terry Cook:
I can’t imagine.

Pete Wright:
Right, By that rate one of you is on their way out the door right now.

Tom Jones:
I know. I know it. If I’m on the way out-

Pete Wright:
Oh, oh, Tom.

Tom Jones:
… it’s retirement, it’s retirement, not not anything else that’s crossed my mind.

Terry Cook:
You better not share something on the air here that I don’t know.

Tom Jones:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Breaking news.

Tom Jones:
I’m trying to think the last job I was really that unhappy. I’ve been very fortunate, in my work life since the ’80s, I’ve had very good jobs.

Pete Wright:
That’s a long time to be happy.

Tom Jones:
It has been-

Terry Cook:
It’s a long time-

Tom Jones:
I know-

Pete Wright:
Not bad. [inaudible 00:26:49]

Terry Cook:
No, I think it is. I think a lot of times I can’t think of any time I would have wanted to quit in any recent years. But I think if there’s any scenarios that have come up over the last X number of years, it’s not surprising. It’s what we read in articles where people have a manager-

Pete Wright:
That’s it-

Terry Cook:
… that might step in, and they may make the work environment completely different than what the person thought it was before. Then that changes their mindset and makes them change what they’re doing, and it’s a readjustment.

Tom Jones:
Right.

Terry Cook:
Like Tom said, we’re really fortunate. We have a great group of people. We have a great leader of our department. We have really great people we work with. We all find a way to work together. It’s very collaborative. I think all of that kind of a culture makes people want to stay; whereas, if you’re really not being open to new ideas and you’re not wanting to listen and collaborate with people, it starts to maybe beat people down a little bit in their mind saying, “Well, they don’t care that I’m here anyways, so why bother each and every day?” I think, again, we’re fortunate that we don’t have that in our workspace, but we’ve certainly heard it, Tom, in different meetings that we-

Tom Jones:
Absolutely.

Terry Cook:
… go to when we talk to other companies where that’s actually one that comes to mind specifically is somebody that came forward and said, “My boss isn’t listening to a word I say. I don’t even know why I come in every day because I don’t feel like I’m valued at all.” So you can see that kind of comment leading to the loud quitting depending on the position the person’s in.

Tom Jones:
Yep.

Pete Wright:
If you’re doing any assessment of your managers and the training they need, I just can’t help but take what you just said, Terry, never underestimate the impact of a single manager, right?

Terry Cook:
That’s right.

Pete Wright:
That there’s an enormous-

Tom Jones:
Right.

Pete Wright:
… enormous impact that a single human can have on the organization.

Terry Cook:
That’s what the stay interviews help with.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Terry Cook:
If you start hearing people talking a lot, usually if you’re hearing so much, there’s something there. So if you’re doing a stay interview and you’re talking to people and you find out, “Oh, my gosh, this talented, skilled manager we think and see great, and then their employees are seeing a different person-

Pete Wright:
Yes.

Terry Cook:
… when they’re interacting with them, let’s figure out how to handle that. To be honest, I think that’s where a lot of our clients come in from coaching is because they may have that manager that they really like. Instead of walking away from everything with them and the employee, “Let me coach that person. Let me see if we can help them to communicate better.” We’ve been fortunate enough to hear a lot of good success stories from those coachings. So it just depends on what the company wants to be open to and what they want to do to maintain their current employment population and how they want to respond to the employees, which as Tom mentioned, could be on social media.

Pete Wright:
Well, it’s probably-

Tom Jones:
No.

Pete Wright:
… on Tom’s TikTok page. TikTok Tom represents.

Terry Cook:
It probably is.

Tom Jones:
As a given. As a given.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Tom Jones:
But that is another issue that companies have to look at so many different fronts. The old days there was a suggestion box, and the suggestion box might say, “This place is lousy,” or, “Fix the time,” whatever it might be. Now you’ve got the suggestion box, plus you’ve got social media accounts. You’ve got texting among employees, you’ve got all these other activities. You’ve got the Indeeds, the LinkedIns, all those places. You’ve got a million different places where people can put their complaints or vocalize whatever they want to say. So it’s a real challenge.

Terry Cook:
Well, and by the way, a lot of it’s protected by the National Labor Relations Act.

Pete Wright:
Sure.

Tom Jones:
You’re not going to hire somebody just to watch social media all day, or maybe you are, but most companies aren’t. They’ll do it occasionally maybe when they’re going to start hiring people, they’re looking, “What’s our reputation out there?” Things like that. But they may not be watching it all the time, and maybe that would be helpful if they could.

Terry Cook:
Maybe.

Tom Jones:
They might be seeing some things out there that, go back to Terry’s point about how do you inform themselves better-

Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure. Well-

Tom Jones:
… about a particular manager?

Pete Wright:
… those services exist. Contact your PR department if you have one. They know how to do what Tom is talking about, and all incredibly useful stuff. Thank you both for doing this. I am going to say, if you haven’t checked out the resources on aimhrsolutions.com, you should do that. I imagine right there, Terry, you can learn more about those on-demand coaching services right there.

Terry Cook:
Absolutely.

Pete Wright:
I don’t think we’ve ever actually specifically pitched Terry the coach.

Terry Cook:
Oh, well, there you go. That’s your problem.

Pete Wright:
That’s right, you could find Coach Terry. You could find Coach Terry right in there on AIM HR Solutions.

Tom Jones:
That’s right.

Pete Wright:
You should definitely do that because there’s some fantastic resources, and they might actually solve those immediate manager training issues for you to get you on the other side of those humps. Keep those loud quitters quietly working. We’ve solved some real problems here today, everybody.

Terry Cook:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Thank you so much. As always, you can find the links and notes about the show at aimhrsolutions.com. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else fine podcasts are served. On behalf of Terry Cook and Tom Jones, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you next time right here on Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People who Love HR.