What Is Quiet Quitting?
5 minute read
From idioms such as socially distant, Zoom fatigue and elbow bump to acronyms like PPE and WFH, the pandemic has fostered its own lexicon to describe our new normal, and it’s continuing to evolve. The latest catchphrase to emerge is ‘quiet quitting’; a phenomenon whereby employees perform the tasks required in their job descriptions, but no more. It’s a backlash against hustle culture and burnout; a consequence of Covid lifestyles that eliminated commuting and presenteeism, making us think about the mythical work-life balance that we craved but couldn’t achieve because our Monday to Friday lives were not our own.
Not everybody has been in a position to join the ‘great resignation’, which reportedly began in the US in early 2021, as individuals left their jobs en masse, having reviewed their lives through the lens of their lockdown lifestyles. According to an article in The Irish Times earlier this year, the phenomenon hasn’t taken hold in this country, and certainly it was reported on Radio 1 last week that employment figures are at a record high, with 2.5 million people now in work. There’s another side to the story, though, which was revealed in Gallup’s global workplace report for 2022.
It revealed that only 11% of workers in Ireland are engaged or enthusiastic about their work, ranking just 31st out of 38 European countries.
The great resignation may not be afoot, but both sets of statistics suggest that quiet quitting could be. The pandemic has prompted an existential shift and people are dramatically rethinking their relationship with work. Although the trend has been most closely associated with Gen Z because of its viral reach on TikTok, for Gen-Xers like us, who, according to an article in Fortune magazine in July, were the original workplace disruptors, dismantling the traditional narrative fed to Baby Boomers – ie, find a good job and hang onto it for as long as possible – quiet quitting is about more than a desire to establish clear work-life boundaries, it’s a hangover of disillusionment and distrust caused by the 2008 recession.
Instead of lithely making one strategic career move after another by deftly switching employers – as we believed we could and should – we spent a decade hanging off the side of a cliff, white-knuckled, and while there may be full employment now, many of us don’t have the positions, status or salaries that we envisioned in our middle years. The fallout of that devastating recession was an unforeseen pattern of individuals in their 30s starting over rather than working their way up. These were tumbleweed years in which redundancies and pay cuts replaced promotions and career progress.
Quiet quitting makes sense then doesn’t it? Why work longer and harder if it won’t save you when the economic tide turns? Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and CEO at Thrive, doesn’t agree. In a LinkedIn post, she announced: “Quiet quitting isn’t just about quitting on a job, it’s a step toward quitting on life.” Certainly, work is a major contributor to our overall health and wellbeing, and if you feel unfulfilled or undervalued, it will inevitably affect your personal relationships and out-of-hours lifestyle. To thrive as human beings, we can’t feel lacklustre about an aspect of our lives that takes up a whole one-third of our waking hours.
In an article published by the National Library of Medicine in the US last year, thriving at work was described as: “the state of positive mental, physical, and social functioning in which workers’ experiences of their work and working conditions enable them to thrive in their overall lives, contributing to their ability to achieve their full potential in their work, home, and community.” By this definition, 89% of workers here are not thriving, according to the Gallup report, which suggests there’ll be some serious socio-economic consequences down the road. Maybe this is because, like the great resignation, quiet quitting hasn’t, in fact, taken hold here yet? At the beginning of the year, Leo Varadkar admitted that employers could force staff to return to the workplace depending on their contacts of employment, and in April, The Independent reported that Ireland’s tech firms were beginning to bring staff back to their Dublin HQs. Maybe employees are feeling a renewed pressure to return to, not just their offices, but burnout-boosting pre-pandemic behaviours, and this is what’s causing a lack of engagement and a feeling of dissatisfaction?
In contrast, I spoke to one former colleague recently who is very happy in her job (she can work fully remotely) and who is very good at it, but she has no interest in doing overtime and does not spend her time thinking about ‘what’s next’.
She’s perfectly content as she is, and this is the essence of quiet quitting. It shouldn’t be mistaken for opting out, clock-watching or having a clock-in-clock-out mentality.
The problem is with the terminology I think. It’s catchy – alliteration always is – but it doesn’t truly reflect the concept, which some would argue is simply a sustainable way of working, which encourages a rounded perspective on life and healthy boundaries. If you are striving to do a good job at work and to maintain a clear work-life balance, being tagged as a ‘quitter’ isn’t helpful or reasonable.
Maybe ‘woke working’ is a more positive buzzword, and a more accurate description, because quiet quitting is in large part about not being taken advantage of in the workplace. It’s also about learning to perform efficiently within designated working hours so that late nights and weekends aren’t necessary. Have you ever had a colleague who sees working late as some sort of achievement in and of itself? In any functional, well-managed workplace, going above and beyond should be an occasional ask, not a regular requirement. Maybe we’d all get further along if we spoke about, and endeavoured for, woke working rather than quiet quitting. Then perhaps next year’s Gallup report on employee engagement could look very different.
Marie Kelly, September 2022
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