If the 1980s, 1990s and into the 2000s had one large impact on work, it was this: the hustle. This is the idea that not only should you be working your 9-5, 5 days a week, but you should also be working overtime, taking on more projects, volunteering your time for work, being ready to handle emails and phone calls on your off time, and so on. Technology really pushed this forward with the 2000s and the “Blackberry generation” heavily promoting the idea that people should always be accessible to each other and their bosses, even at weird hours of the night (or at least pretend to be). It culminated in the mid 2010s with things like ‘girl boss’, ‘side hustles’, and multiple revenue streams.
Then the pandemic hit and suddenly people were realizing that they didn’t really have to work 70 hours a week, nor was it really healthy to do so. Work-life balance became a talking point in the mouth of employees and employers across the world and many employees refused to work for a business that forced them to be at the employer’s beck and call.
Now we are looking at the resurgence of an old idea: the Quiet Quit.
What’s Quiet Quitting?
In essence, it means putting in the effort you need to at work, but no more that that. It’s not exactly doing the bare minimum per se (though some employers have accused it of being that); instead, it’s more about sticking in your lane for work and not taking it home with you or taking on everything under the sun to prove something to your boss. In other words, it’s not so much quitting the job as it is quitting bleed over from the job and taking one’s free time back. In other words, putting up boundaries between work and the rest of your life.
Certainly, plenty of people advocate doing the bare minimum and only doing more if their work contract is renewed with payment and benefits to balance out the extra work, but other advocates say that it simply means keeping a healthy boundary between work and personal life: no working unpaid overtime, no answering emails at midnight, and so on.
Quiet Quitting is not a new phenomenon, but it has reared its head in the 2020s as a response to both the pandemic employment landscape and because many Gen Z and Millennial workers did try to work long hours with extra projects and found they got little for their efforts beyond burn out and exhaustion. This is partly what fueled the Great Resignation, but with inflation now, people can’t easily quit their jobs anymore. However, they can control how much of their job takes over their entire lives and for many people, once the clock strikes quitting time, they’re done for the day.
Why Are People Quiet Quitting?
There are usually one of two reasons people are doing this: either they don’t feel appreciated for the amount of work they were doing so they dial it back to the bare minimum reckoning that no one will notice anyway. The other reasons is to prevent burn out, prevent the rest of their lives from getting out of balance, or because they don’t like their job but cannot afford to quit and look for something new. (Sometimes the two reasons overflow into each other).
Quiet Quitting can also be done as a protest a la “Work to Rule” when people will only do exactly what their job specifies, but no more, to prove the point that they should be getting better paid for doing the extra work they used to feel compelled to do.
What Can Be Done About It?
You can well imagine that some employers are extremely uneasy about this practice. It feels like their employees are coasting (Which they kinda are), that they are less engaged (oh, 100% less engaged) and that their business will suffer for it (likely, but one could easily argue that if overworking and underpaying your staff was your business model, you probably deserve to lose your business). Many people also criticize quiet quitters, calling them slackers, lazy, and that they don’t deserve to have the job they have. Quiet quitters have also been accused of being selfish and not team players while the quiet quitters retaliate with the fact that they aren’t getting paid enough or respected enough to burn themselves to the ground for a business.
Ignoring the nasty comments (on both sides), there are some ways that management can combat the quiet quitting trend without making themselves look like tyrants:
- Have a sit down with your employees and rehash their job duties and wages for the job they are doing. If you have been sneaking a lot of extra duties under “Other duties as required”, it’s time to do a clean up of the job description, rehash what the description entails, and figure out fair payment, hours, and benefits. Many quiet quitters are doing this because they feel bowed under from doing two or three jobs in one day. Restructuring their job to better reflect what they want to do and can do goes a long way.
- Respect your employee’s time off. If they work 9-5, don’t badger them at 9pm for stuff.
- Plan needed overtime ahead of time and don’t spring it on people at the last second. Constantly asking people to work past their usual end time is what causes people to feel burned out and underappreciated. Plus, it looks disorganized.
- Create a culture where people feel comfortable saying No when they are asked to do extra work. There are some great workshops on things like the ‘Positive No’ which you can get your employees to do so that they feel better saying no about doing something they don’t want to do.
- Encourage your employees to set their schedule and be able to stick with it for projects, communications, and deadlines
- Try to avoid micromanaging or constantly checking in on them.
And while I personally am not a huge fan of the idea of ‘love languages’, it is true that everyone will be motivated by different things, so finding out what will keep your employees feeling more loyal and engaged is important.
But what can an employer do with a Quiet Quitter? The main thing is not treat it as a reason to discipline the employee or go after them for conduct and instead treat it as a problem solving exercise: why does the employee feel that way, why are the less motivated, and what can the employer do to help? It would be easier to just bust them on it, but this does nothing to deal with the source of the problem: burn out, feeling undervalued and overworked, and general dissatisfaction and in fact will simply cause the employer to lose more employees.
Is Quiet Quitting Going to Become the Norm?
As much as employers have been in a right tizzy about this, it’s unlikely that Quiet Quitting will become the new normal for working. There are plenty of people who enjoy working all the time and others who will not feel comfortable with the idea of quiet quitting.
What it has done though, which is highly beneficial to everyone, is continue the conversation around burn out, work expectations, healthy boundaries, and fair pay. These are tough conversations to have, but important as employment continues to evolve and change.
Are you quiet quitting at work or do you think it’s selfish? Sound off on our Facebook page!
