First It Was Quiet Quitting, Now Workers Are Facing Off With Their Bosses

More and more Americans aren’t feeling great at work.

Half of workers aren’t engaged on the job, putting in minimal effort to get by, according to research by Gallup released Tuesday. Employee engagement in the U.S. declined for the second year in a row. There is also a growing share of the workforce that is disengaged, or resentful that their needs aren’t being met. In some cases, these workers are disgruntled over low pay and long hours, or they have lost trust in their employers.

“Employers are just not as in touch with employees,” said Jim Harter, chief workplace scientist at Gallup and lead author on the report. Some of the recent shift in attitude stems from workers having unclear expectations from their managers.

Workers’ frustrations have been building since 2021, after Gallup-measured U.S. worker-engagement levels hit their highest level on record in 2020. In the spring and summer of 2020, as Covid-19 spread and there was social unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, executives at many companies had town halls and listening sessions with employees, communicating organisational mission and keeping workplace relationships strong.

This year, more companies are trying to bring workers back to offices as bosses fret about worker productivity and loyalty.

Gallup surveyed more than 60,000 people in the U.S. to compile the report, which has tracked Americans’ sentiment about their jobs since 2000, and says engaged workers are more productive and tend to stay at their jobs for longer.

“If you feel like your employer isn’t giving you what you need to do your work, you’re going to be much less loyal—and looking for other work,” said Harter.

The remote work divide

Gallup’s findings come amid backlash from workers, many of whom have recently stepped up protests against in-office requirements as companies change pandemic-era policies.

Workers at insurer Farmers Group called to unionise, and some pledged to quit after a new chief executive said he would require most workers to be in-office three days a week. Amazon.com workers demonstrated at lunch recently against a hybrid-work policy with three days in the office a week.

An employee’s relationship with a direct boss is more important to engagement than where people work, said Harter. One way to build these connections is for managers to have meaningful conversations with their employees, preferably at least once a week.

Working on trust

Many employees see shifts away from flexible schedules and remote work options as a signal that executives don’t trust them to do their jobs outside of the office. Others say benefits to remote work they experienced during the pandemic, including more time with family and cutting back commutes, are now critical to their happiness.

The employers making more in-office work a requirement are, in part, motivated by trying to bolster workers’ loyalty, which they correlate with longer retention, said Katy George, a senior partner and chief people officer at McKinsey & Co.

Kyle Pflueger, 34 years old, was hired in 2020 to work remotely as a product manager. He met his co-workers in person just a few times over the years and never felt fully connected to his work or colleagues, but as the breadwinner for his family, he needed the pay, retirement benefits and health insurance.

Pflueger left his full-time job this month to focus on his independent projects.

“I wasn’t feeling particularly happy with the work that I was doing,” he said. He now works full time for himself, building and maintaining websites for businesses.

Looking for less stress

Workers also said they were more stressed this year than last, according to Gallup’s survey. American workers are among the most stressed, tied with workers in Canada and parts of East Asia.

Workplace stressors include low salaries, long hours and a lack of opportunity for advancement, according to an October report from the U.S. Surgeon General. The report also warned that workplace stress can be bad for mental health, disrupt sleep and raise one’s vulnerability to infection.

Michele Spilberg Hart, who directs marketing for a Boston-area health nonprofit, said that she has told her staff to take time off when they aren’t feeling well mentally or physically. Their work isn’t life-or-death, and taking breaks can help people come back with more energy and better ideas, she said.

“They cannot do good work and be healthy if they’re not taking care of themselves first,” she said. “If you don’t take care of yourself, nobody else will.”

Christie’s remained in the grip of an ongoing cyberattack on Tuesday, a crisis that has hobbled the auction house’s website and altered the way it can handle online bids. This could disrupt its sales of at least $578 million worth of art up for bid this week, starting tonight with a pair of contemporary art auctions amid New York’s major spring sales.

Christie’s said it has been grappling with the fallout of what it described as a technology security incident since Thursday morning—a breach or threat of some kind, though the auction house declined to discuss details because of its own security protocols. Christie’s also declined to say whether any of the private or financial data it collects on its well-heeled clientele had been breached or stolen, though it said it would inform customers if that proves to be the case.

“We’re still working on resolving the incident, but we want to make sure we’re continuing our sales and assuring our clients that it’s safe to bid,” said Chief Executive Guillaume Cerutti.

Sotheby’s and Phillips haven’t reported any similar attacks on their sites.

Christie’s crisis comes at a particularly fragile moment for the global art market. Heading into these benchmark spring auctions, market watchers were already wary, as broader economic fears about wars and inflation have chipped away at collectors’ confidence in art values. Christie’s sales fell to $6.2 billion last year, down 20% from the year before.

Doug Woodham, managing partner of Art Fiduciary Advisors and a former Christie’s president, said people don’t want to feel the spectre of scammers hovering over what’s intended to be an exciting pastime or serious investment: the act of buying art. “It’s supposed to be a pleasurable activity, so anything that creates an impediment to enjoying that experience is problematic because bidders have choices,” Woodham said.

Aware of this, Cerutti says the house has gone into overdrive to publicly show the world’s wealthiest collectors that they can shop without a glitch—even as privately the house has enlisted a team of internal and external technology experts to resolve the security situation. Currently, it’s sticking to its schedule for its New York slate of six auctions of impressionist, modern and contemporary art, plus two luxury sales, though one watch sale in Geneva scheduled for Monday was postponed to today.

The first big test for Christie’s comes tonight with the estimated $25 million estate sale of top Miami collector Rosa de la Cruz, who died in February and whose private foundation offerings include “Untitled” (America #3),” a string of lightbulbs by Félix González-Torres estimated to sell for at least $8 million.

Cerutti said no consignors to Christie’s have withdrawn their works from its sales this week as a result of the security incident. After the De la Cruz sale, Christie’s 21st Century sale on Tuesday will include a few pricier heavyweights, including a Brice Marden diptych, “Event,” and a Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1982, “The Italian Version of Popeye Has no Pork in his Diet,” each estimated to sell for at least $30 million.

But the cyberattack has already altered the way some collectors might experience these bellwether auctions at Christie’s. Registered online bidders used to be able to log into the main website before clicking to bid in sales. This week, the house will email them a secure link redirecting them to a private Christie’s Live site where they can watch and bid in real time. Everyone else will be encouraged to call in or show up to bid at the house’s saleroom in Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan.

If more bidders show up in person, the experience might prove to be a squeeze. During the pandemic, Christie’s reconfigured its main saleroom from a vast, well-lit space that could fit several hundred people into a spotlit set that more closely evokes a television studio, with far fewer seats and more roving cameras—all part of the auction industry’s broader effort to entice more collectors as well as everyday art lovers to tune in, online.

Once this smaller-capacity saleroom is filled, Christie’s said it will direct people into overflow rooms elsewhere in the building. Those who want to merely watch the sale can’t watch on Christie’s website like usual but can follow along via Christie’s YouTube channel.

Art adviser Anthony Grant said he typically shows up to bid on behalf of his clients in these major sales, though he said his collectors invariably watch the sales online as well so they can “read the room” in real time and text him updates. This week, Grant said a European collector who intends to vie for a work at Christie’s instead gave Grant a maximum amount to spend.

Grant said the cyberattack popped up in a lot of his conversations this past weekend. “There’s a lot of shenanigans going on, and people have grown so sensitive to their banks and hospitals getting hacked,” he said. “Now, their auction house is going through the same thing, and it’s irksome.”

First It Was Quiet Quitting, Now Workers Are Facing Off With Their Bosses

Employee frustrations impact productivity and worker retention, Gallup says

The remote work divide

Working on trust

Looking for less stress

The auction house plans for sales to proceed, including for a Warhol ‘Flowers’ estimated at $20 million