CURBING QUIET QUITTING
POSITIVE OUTLOOK FOR SPANISH SOCIAL ENTERPRISES COUNTRY: Spain SCHOOL: Esade Business School, Ramon Llull University Defined as businesses with a social objective, social enterprises seek to make a profit at the same time as benefiting society or the environment. A recent report from the Esade Centre for Social Impact looked into 80 social enterprises in Spain. The report, entitled The European Social Enterprise Monitor (ESEM) 2021-2022, is co-authored by Guillermo Casasnovas, researcher at the Esade Centre for Social Impact, with support from María Sánchez and Maria Viñas at the Barcelona-based Knowledge Sharing Network (KSNET). While all the companies who took part in the study were social enterprises, within this umbrella all the organisations had a diverse profile, with associations and limited societies being the most common, followed by foundations and cooperatives. The report had largely positive findings. Over the past year, the income of 56 per cent of the social enterprises had increased, while the income of only 16 per cent fell. Looking to the future, most social enterprises had positive outlooks – 71 per cent of these companies expected that their income would increase over the next 12 months, while only four per cent believed it would fall. Responding social enterprises also hope to expand, with 58 per cent intending to recruit more employees and less than three per cent envisaging layoffs. “The impact economy to which social enterprises belong continues to grow because consumers, investors and entrepreneurs increasingly take social and environmental impact into account when making decisions,” said Esade’s Casasnovas. On average, the social enterprises’ main source of income came from the public sector – from business engaged with the public sector or in the form of grants. In terms of grants, half had applied for grants in the past 12 months. Despite this, however, a fifth of the organisations surveyed said that the complexity of public funding was one of their main obstacles. When looking at diversity and inclusion practices, the survey also found that social enterprises in Spain tend to be very inclusive. Six out of 10 social enterprises surveyed employed people from different ethnic origins and 44 per cent employed persons with functional diversity. The report also found that the social enterprises feature very high rates of gender equality. On average, women in social enterprises represented 63 per cent of staff, 52 per cent of management, more than 50 per cent of those on management boards or boards of trustees and 42 per cent of teams. EB
COUNTRY: South Africa SCHOOL: Stellenbosch Business School, University of Stellenbosch A new trend has emerged in the workplace – ‘quiet quitting’. Despite its name, this doesn’t mean that employees are just resigning without saying “goodbye”. Instead, they become disengaged, saying “no” to going the extra mile and withdrawing from being involved in workplace culture. Signs that an employee could be quietly quitting include doing the bare minimum, missing meetings, not achieving deadlines, arriving late to work, leaving early, isolating themselves from team culture and showing less commitment to their work. Organisational behaviour specialist Natasha Winkler-Titus, who heads up the Leadership Development Programme at Stellenbosch Business School, explains that employees are “setting boundaries to recalibrate work/life balance and protect their mental health.” Winkler-Titus added: “Work/life boundaries are healthy and necessary, although quiet quitting could be seen as a passive- aggressive way of achieving this, rather than a more constructive, assertive approach. “It is a signal to employers, though, to focus on employee engagement and wellbeing and to create a supportive environment where employees feel they have a voice and are being heard. Employers that don’t focus on, and enable discussion about, improving mental health and employee wellbeing risk a disengaged workforce or losing employees to companies that offer better wellness benefits.” Winkler-Titus theorises that the trend of quiet quitting stems from Covid-19’s impact on the workforce, with more people working from home and reflecting on how work fits into their life. People are quiet quitting to keep their professional and personal lives separate, rebelling against the expectation that they will return to their pre- pandemic working routines. When employees don’t feel like they are being supported by management and their employer isn’t matching up to their expectations, they can feel like they don’t have to meet their employer’s expectations – leading that employee to leave the organisation or quietly quit. To ebb this trend, Winkler-Titus believes that organisations need to have more open understanding of employee expectations and motivations for work. Employers should encourage a positive work/ life balance and aim to offer work that employees find interesting. Employers should also ensure that they provide a focus on their staff’s career aspirations, progression and upskilling. EB
10 | Ambition | DECEMBER 2022/JANUARY 2023
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