Posted on 08/24/2022 8:27:24 AM PDT by Brookhaven
Move over rage quitting, “quiet quitting” is the latest workplace phenomenon.
It may sound like the act of someone silently resigning, but it actually refers to the rejection of “hustle culture” — the expectation to go above and beyond in your job, rather than simply doing the requirements of the job.
It’s a term that has gained traction since a wave of TikTok posts recently emerged from people who consider themselves quiet quitters. TikTok creator Zaid Khan, @zkchillin, posted on TikTok about his own discovery of the term in late July — a video that went viral. In the video he described quiet quitting as “not outright quitting your job, but quitting the idea of going above and beyond.”
But what exactly is quiet quitting, what’s inspired it and what does it signal for how Gen Z shows up at work in the long term? Here’s an explainer.
What is quiet quitting? Going above and beyond simply meeting the bare minimum requirements of a job has long been the working norm. This supercharged work ethic — dubbed hustle culture — has been a way workers have made themselves stand out to their employers, and over time has become standard.
But like most things in the world of work — this too is now being upended.
It might be because of the great resignation trend, which empowered employees to demand more from their work experiences and work-like balance. But it’s also likely a byproduct of the psychological fallout from living through the coronavirus pandemic, and the subsequent burnout that affected millions.
Regardless, giving 110% is out the door because workers want to avoid exhaustion and ditch stressful jobs that expect them to do more than what’s in their job description. And it’s Generation Z workers — those aged up to 24 years old — who seem the keenest to embrace it.
“The generational influences that were paused during the two years of Covid are now back and they have accelerated because of the options that this workforce has,” said Joe Galvin, chief research officer at Vistage, a CEO coaching and peer advisory organization. “The generational drivers behind that place value on things more so than just career, income, career, income.”
The result is that more employees are strictly sticking to their job descriptions and aren’t staying on the clock past 5 p.m. in an effort to avoid burnout and make time for things outside of work.
“It’s an important message to amplify that we’re all deserving of having a work-life balance and for work to not be all consuming and inflicting so much stress upon us,” Khan, who works as an engineer, told WorkLife. “I thought there must be people out there who feel the same way. Going above and beyond at a company, they won’t remember the effort you put in a few years down the line, but what you will remember is those sleepless nights you had. Why can’t you shift that focus to prioritizing your life and your hobbies and nurturing more of the things that matter?”
Khan said he’s made a personal shift to make sure he has the time and energy for things outside of work. But that doesn’t mean he will slack off during his work hours, he stressed.
“In essence what this quiet quitting movement is reinforcing is that doing just your job is enough,” said Khan.
Deloitte Global’s “2022 Gen Z and Millennial” survey found that these generations are striving for balance and advocating for change like never before. The report revealed that good work-life balance and learning and development opportunities were the top priorities for respondents when choosing an employer. It also showed that 45% of Gen Zers feel burned out due to their work environment and 44% have left jobs due to workload pressure.
“Your worth as a person is not defined by your labor,” said Khan in his TikTok, which received nearly 500,000 likes and was viewed over 3 million times.
The Deloitte survey found that 40% of Gen Zers would like to leave their job within two years, and 35% would leave without having another job lined up.
Cathy Acratopulo, co-founder of HR consultancy Lace Partners, said that given the hiring challenges most businesses are facing, employers may find it’s easier to take the productivity hit and retain someone who’s operating at minimum levels than carry the cost of job vacancies.
That said, it’s not something employees are likely to be rewarded for either. “While an employee may feel quietly quitting helps them to achieve a better balance in the short term by not going the extra mile at work, the likelihood is they will be impacted by lower performance-related incentives and reduced opportunities for alternative roles and progression,” said Acratopulo.
So is quiet quitting a new concept? Not entirely. But it’s only now gaining real steam. The pandemic has shifted how people — across all generations — think about their work-life balance. According to PwC’s “Global Workforce Hopes and Fears” survey, one in five workers worldwide plans to quit their job in 2022.
Meanwhile, Gallup’s “State of the Global Workforce 2022” report found there is a 21% global employee engagement rate. In the U.S. and Canada, it’s up to 33%, however 50% of workers experience daily stress and 41% experience daily worry. In the U.K., only 9% of workers are engaged or enthusiastic about work.
And yet, while all generations have reassessed their work-life balance, Gen Zers are known to have radically different views from all older generations when it comes to careers and how to define success in life and in the workforce. So the quiet quitting movement is likely to take hold in this generation especially.
More than 4,300 comments were made on Khan’s TikTok video post, including: “I do just enough to not get fired or noticed,” “I did this when I asked for a raise and they told me no,” “I’ve changed my work motto to ‘strive to be mediocre,'” “my above and beyond requires an above and beyond salary,” and “that’s how normal work should be.” Others admitted participating in quiet quitting for years already.
What is Gen Z saying? “Gen Z is less afraid to speak up and be vocal about this,” said Khan, 24. “We are realizing that our overworking — we don’t see that leading us down the same fruitful path as it did for older generations. Some of my friends and I joke that we’ll never be able to afford a house. Gen Z have this fire under their bellies that something needs to change.”
Twenty-four-year-old Rebecca (a pseudonym WorkLife agreed to) who works at an environmental consultancy in New York told WorkLife that she now only does what her job description outlined after she spent her first year there doing tasks that weren’t discussed during the interview process.
“The most important thing for me is work-life balance,” she said. “If they expect me to not have a life outside of work or lose sleep or sacrifice my breaks or free time or have my hair fall out from stress it will never be worth it.”
While millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) began to bring some change to the workforce, she finds that some of her millennial colleagues or bosses still have the mindset of a boomer (born between 1946 and 1964) that working hard will pay off.
“I think Gen Z has realized that our time outside of work and our mental health will always take priority and going above and beyond for a company that doesn’t do that for you is not worth it,” Rebecca said.
“We’ve seen a shift for requests by millennials and Gen Zs prior to Covid,” said Vistage’s Galvin. “They were requests, now they’re demands. The reason they can demand it is because the employment market, despite having cooled, it’s only now red hot.”
The power that Gen Z holds in the workforce could be the same reason that they’re able to partake in quiet quitting to steer clear of burnout and ensure they have a work-life balance. Gen Z will account for 30% of the workforce by 2030.
“You see more boomers every day stepping out, fewer [generation] Xs [born between 1965 and 1980] ready to step up, and the millennials and the Zs are now the dominant numbers in the workforce,” said Galvin.
Galvin said that Vistage is focused on developing managerial competencies, coaching capabilities and leadership disciplines so that veteran workers can truly manage the new millennial and Gen Z workforce.
So rather than adopting this quiet quitting, should an employee just talk to their employer about how they feel? Yes. In theory, if an employee is quietly quitting it’s likely a sign that they should appeal to their boss or move on from their role.
However, the young workforce is overall increasingly disengaged.
“I couldn’t care less about what happens to my company,” said Rebecca. “This is a resume builder for me to go into something that actually helps our climate and environment and doesn’t care about profit.”
While some Gen Zers might do more with better compensation, this generation cares more than ever about whether their company is making a difference. According to the Deloitte study, only 18% of Gen Zers and 16% of millennials believe their employers are strongly committed to fighting climate change. Rebecca said her perspective would change on the effort she puts into a job if she felt she was making a positive difference to good causes.
She plans to quit by the end of this year, and won’t necessarily line up another job beforehand.
The quiet quitting phenomenon may signpost how employers need to prioritize different qualities when hiring new employees, like being a curious individual. Building a talent pipeline of professionals who are curious, love learning and are motivated might help avoid creating a staff of quiet quitters.
“We really need to find people that are a good cultural fit who are motivated to learn,” Stacey Force, ManpowerGroup’s innovation strategist and vp of product marketing, told WorkLife last week.
Lace partners’ Acratopulo suggested employers try to prevent quiet quitting by taking the employee pulse regularly to understand how people are feeling and to track engagement. By doing this, an employer could either encourage the employee who is quiet quitting, or ensure they move on to a role that they really want to do.
Pat Ashworth, director of learning solutions at AdviserPlus, recommends that human resource departments focus on how to empower managers with data and tools to identify issues early and deal with underperformance effectively.
“Employee engagement is more than routine one-to-ones and work-focused check-ins; it’s about making employees feel valued and recognized for who they are so that they have a more emotional connection to the organization,” said Ashworth. “Enabling managers to focus on building more personal relationships and empathy with their teams should help to avoid widespread issues of employee disengagement.”
You're welcome. Same to you.
Well said!
Why is Gen Z doing it? Because they’ve learned by watching their Baby Boomer parents bust their chops all their lives, going above and beyond to excel at every opportunity at work, only to be given a severance package and an escort out the door when the whims of upper management changed or the company got bought and reorged.
I think maybe the Gen Z kids are smarter than we are. All that going above and beyond and working nights and weekends to make a deadline ever did for me was to set a new low bar and management expectation for the *next* project. I hope my kids, when they get to my age, will be looking back on a lifetime of happy memories with *their* families, and not regretting every time they shortchanged their family for the benefit of their employer and their so-called career.
Bingo
Well, I must have been ahead of the curve...
When people would ask me what I do for a living, I would say:
As little as possible, and still get a paycheck.
Actually the worst thing is to watch someone who cared about the company, worked over and above getting laid off while a slacker who was good at schmoozing the boss kept their job.
One of the things I’ve seen most often is management that cut muscle instead of fat.
Working to Contract - not new - subgenius even.
They do not care about you in most cases.
Many companies are run by grifter sh-tbags, treat them accordingly!
Not just GenZ. I have scaled back in my work life. Still maintain the quality of work but the volume has been throttled back. If you continue to give, they will take and at the end of the year you might receive the 2% raise to help offset the increase in premiums for benefits. I still work 45-50 hours a week, but don’t ask me to check in on the weekends, unless it is a real emergency. I was offered a promotion that had a small increase in pay, I declined as the position is pretty much 7 days a week. Only a couple hours on the weekends, but still work.
I don’t disagree with the concept.
No.
That is the bullsh-it companies shovel to use you up and throw you away.
No thanks scumbags!
I’ve well learned that working your ass off doesn’t equal increased pay and benefits, rather it only leads to management leaning on you more and expecting you to cover for the less productive employees.
Agree with what you wrote. You are now just a number on a managers p&l. And they mostly consider you a in the l column.
I’m a gen Xer and have been at my same employer for nearly 30 years. Early on I discovered above and beyond meant nothing as well as their promises of go the extra mile, get that degree or certification it will help you with the company-it did not.
I have come in and did my job the best I can in all that time, however it meant no volunteering for extracurricular activities, no I don’t want to contribute part of my paycheck to the president of the companies favorite charity etc... I make sure my department is good at what it does, I give them a fair days work for a fair days pay, but they have shown above and beyond means squat to them. Oh they will take it and not give you so much as a well done, in fact they will ask for more.
I had an employee I hired in my department a really great worker, a gen Xer and she would complete all the duties I would give her quickly and correctly and I praised her efforts knowing she would not be recognized outside of my praise. I was in charge of another department as well and she took interest in that and I moved her to that department and it was a thankless job, odd hours, little relief etc... And she did it all really great, with no benefits which she knew going in and I would give her days off with pay for staying in the trenches and getting the job done it was the only way I could reward her efforts.
Eventually IT hired her and I told her they will work you hard and the more you do the more they will pile on you and you will not be rewarded, keep this in mind, they will burn you out. She didn’t believe me and I would see her from time to time and she was staying late, coming in early with more and more duties and the same pay. Finally after seven years she walked in and said I realize what you were trying to tell me. I can’t even do the basic job anymore I am so burned out. She turned in her notice, worked it out and with a wealth of networking and IT knowledge turned down other jobs in those areas to become a teachers aide in kindergarten.
I take pride in making sure my department does what it is supposed to but loyalty is a one way street with my company and it always has been.
Payouts, you talk about payouts ruining morality? Joke!
Before there were payouts to workers there was a corporate tax cut. The corporations kept the 18% for themselves. They did not pass it on to their workers. Most used it for stock buy backs.
Thats usually where it goes where I work.
Then why should they care about you?
They never have. Inflation-adjusted wages have been stagnant since 1971 even as companies have laid off and offshored like made, and the GDP has increased 400%.
The money has gone to executives, hedge-fund investors, gargantuan new government bureaucracies, and welfare queens and illegal immigrants.
Troll.
Calling George Costanza. Please pick up line 1, 2, or 3 😁
It’s true of the vast majority. It’s certainly true enough that a company who doesn’t operate that way is the exception and not the rule.
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