Mike Rowe was just on Stuart Varney’s show on Fox, talking about the Quiet Quitters, and it was his opinion that they should be fired, because your staff wants to work more hours, and could absorb the workload of the Quiet Quitters.

I don’t disagree with Mike, but he overlooked one key factor to be considered before firing them: your investment in hiring and training them.

So, we’d say have a quiet conversation with the people you think are Quiet Quitters and see if there’s something to you can do to motivate them to do either more work or better work. Remember, it’s not necessarily money that they want, but instead might be something like different working hours, working from home, freedom to set one’s schedule, etc.

An interesting sidebar to this question is another point Mike brought up: the decline in the national labor participation rate, caused by people who just don’t want to work. In fairness, maybe they’re working on their entrepreneurial dream, in which case they should call us, because we’ll give them a free hour of consulting to see if their dream makes sense.