HR and business leaders can help alleviate burnout and boost well-being among employees by enhancing employee support systems, maintaining reasonable workloads, and improving psychological safety.
By Simon Kent
Coined by Frank Giampietro, EY Americas’ chief well-being officer, “quiet cracking” defines what happens when workers show up, do their job, but struggle in silence while they do so. Giampietro may have been speaking of his own company’s experience, but he seems to have hit a nerve across the global workforce. According to research from digital transformation consultancy Adaptavist, based on a study of 4,000 knowledge workers in the U.K., U.S., Canada, and Germany, more than four in 10 knowledge workers report reduced motivation (42%), admit to feeling unappreciated by managers (41%), and say they’ve experienced emotional withdrawal (40%) over the last 12 months. Even in 2023, the mental health charity MIND found 60% of employees who experience poor mental health don’t speak up at work.
Perhaps most concerning is that this could be seen as the latest in the “quiet” phenomenon HR professionals are dealing with—joining quitting, vacationing, and so on. The implication being that there are feelings and issues brewing within the workforce of which HR may not necessarily be aware, but which nonetheless have an impact on productivity and, to strip it to its essentials, happiness in the workplace.
“Over recent months, we’ve seen some elements of what ‘quiet cracking’ is with the pressures to achieve stretching objectives and meeting personal and professional targets. Ecotone’s culture encourages people to speak up and share through various avenues including one-to-one or team meetings, pulse engagement surveys, or speaking directly to our designated internal health champions.” – Ann Chambers, HR director, Ecotone
Ian Nicholas, global managing director at Reed, acknowledges the rise of quiet cracking, describing it as “a silent signal that something is amiss in the workplace.” The issue is becoming relevant, he argues, as employees grapple with economic uncertainty, heavier workloads, and a lack of psychological safety.
“HR teams play a critical role in addressing this issue by proactively identifying early warning signs, such as disengagement or subtle shifts in behaviour, and implementing support systems like regular well-being check-ins and confidential feedback channels,” he says. “On top of this, trying to ensure fair workload management and clear signposting of support should make it easier for employees to speak up when they need help.”
Nicholas encourages HR to consider how they are employing people—balancing the use of contractors and temporary employees to ensure permanent employees do not feel over-stretched—as well as ensuring well-being programmes foster a culture of trust. “This is not only more likely to retain valuable employees, but it will also help attract jobseekers who value a workplace that genuinely cares about its people,” he says. “Building peer networks, promoting healthy boundaries, and celebrating those who set a positive example all send a powerful message that well-being is valued just as highly as performance—and that’s what is needed at present.”
Caz Hawley, director of Hawley HR and Coaching, agrees HR plays a critical role here and also cites the need for creating psychological safety—a culture where people feel able to speak without fear of repercussions. “This involves more than one-off well-being initiatives,” she says, “It means normalising conversations about the ups and downs of mental health.”
Hawley says leaders should be encouraged to share their own stories of overcoming challenges as well as giving managers the tools required to spot early signs of disengagement. The offer of confidential check-ins can also help in embedding well-being into everyday practice, not just at moments of crisis. “By reframing mental health as part of the human experience, HR can help employees feel supported, valued, and heard,” says Hawley.
“It’s interesting to have a label on this in HR,” comments Ann Chambers, HR director at Ecotone. “Over recent months, we’ve seen some elements of what ‘quiet cracking’ is with the pressures to achieve stretching objectives and meet personal and professional targets.”
According to Chambers, Ecotone’s culture encourages people to speak up and share. “It’s an important part of our structure, which is why we offer various avenues for this from one-to-one or team meetings, pulse engagement surveys, or speaking directly to our designated internal health champions,” she says.
In this way, difficulties experienced by individual employees can be identified before they escalate – better for the employee and better for the business. However, Chambers acknowledges that not everyone takes advantage of these offerings because it may not be in their nature to, or they may be worried about the repercussions. “This is why it’s so vital to actively encourage an open dialogue,” she says, also adding that it falls to HR to ensure workloads are stretching and rewarding but not unobtainable or unreasonable.
“Recently, one of the teams had an offsite meeting and were encouraged to share how they were feeling,” she says. “They did speak up, and voiced that they didn’t feel their wins for the company had been recognised. For us, this is an opportunity to put things in place to ensure all members of our team feel appreciated for the great work they do.”
As Chambers notes, not every company culture encourages or welcomes such input from their employees. Indeed, quiet cracking comes with it the suggestion that the employee may not actually want to discuss how they’re feeling with their employer. The reason for disengagement could be personal, something they think they can deal with on their own, and the first the employer will know of it is when productivity is affected or worse, the employees just leaves.
Technology and AI may have a part to play here, offering particular insights into the workforce that can put people managers on the front foot. Raz Dar, CEO at Elvee, explains his company’s technology targets contact centre workers, analysing worker performance data to highlight possible disengagement issues before they become significant. The result, says Dar, is to create better managers within the business who are alert to the risk of losing agents sooner and ready to take action to help. “Managers might simply need to talk to an employee to understand what’s going on,” he says. “You can discover why someone is consistently late to work, for example, if there’s something going on at home. Even simply the way the manager greets someone when they come to work can make a difference for that person.”
The impact of this is to help shift the culture of the workplace. If managers engage more effectively with their workers, then employees feel more appreciated and valued. Dar reports in some cases retention rates within contact centre organisations have improved by more than 50%. In that sector especially, happier agents mean happier customers.
Placed in context, quiet cracking can be the first signs that an employee is feeling over-stretched and under-appreciated and a precursor to burnout. This scenario may not be new for HR, but the earlier intervention afforded by the idea means problems to be addressed before they become significant—and that will always be of benefit to employees and employers alike.
