‘Quiet quitters’ aren’t the problem. Save your ire for the ‘loud labourers’ | André Spicer

You know the type. These people talk the talk - but for them, getting any actual work done is strictly an afterthought

In recent weeks, there has been an avalanche of discussion about quiet quitters". These are people who have grown disillusioned with their workplaces and given up putting in additional effort; no monitoring their emails during the weekend or working on a pressing project during the evening. Quiet quitters have retreated into their job description, trying to preserve their sanity by limiting what they do.

Yet the discussion about quiet quitters has entirely overlooked their noisier cousins: the loud labourers". If you have had a colleague who spends more time talking about work than actually doing it, then you have witnessed a loud labourer first-hand. These are employees who see their core task as telling everyone what they have done. For these individuals, the actual work is a distant afterthought. They graft for the gram, toil for the tweets, and labour for the LinkedIn likes. Actually getting anything done is just an afterthought.

Andre Spicer is professor of organisational behaviour at the Bayes Business School at City, University of London