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Quiet quitting is reported to be on the increase in the post-COVID pandemic workplace, especially among early-career Generation Z (Gen Z) employees. This trend poses serious challenges and could negatively affect organisational productivity, performance, and profitability. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of mentoring and coaching on quiet quitting among graduate interns. This study also seeks to assess whether work engagement mediates this relationship and job insecurity moderates the mediated relationship between mentoring and coaching and quiet quitting via work engagement. Purposive and snowball sampling were used to recruit participants. Data were collected from 264 graduate interns employed in fixed-term internship programmes in South African organisations. The data was analysed using the SPSS PROCESS macro and SPSS Amos 30 graphics. The results showed that mentoring and coaching was significantly and negatively related to quiet quitting behaviours among graduate interns, and this negative relationship was partially mediated by work engagement. Furthermore, job insecurity moderated the mediated effect of mentoring and coaching on quiet quitting behaviours via work engagement. This study advances our understanding of how organisations can mitigate quiet quitting among graduate interns by integrating the social exchange theory and Job Demands–Resources model (JD-R). The practical implication for organisations is to capacitate line managers with technical, professional, and interpersonal skills to mentor and coach early-career Gen Z employees. Line manager mentoring and coaching will increase early-career Gen Z employees’ work engagement and subdue quiet quitting, which is reported to be on the rise among this generation.
Siwela et al. (Thu,) studied this question.