How much work is too much? The answer to this question might vary from person to person, but if a recent trend is to be taken seriously, people have started defining how much work can be measured as too much, and have decided to actively disengage.
While a recent survey revealed that the 'Great Resignation’—a post-pandemic phenomenon of a record number of employees quitting their jobs for various reasons—that has impacted workplaces across the globe, may be waning, there is another trend that is gaining momentum and possibly acceptance—quiet quitting.
Let not the term deceive you! Quiet quitting has nothing to do with quitting. Perhaps, this trend has been there all along in all workplaces, albeit quietly, only to rear its head when someone says 'above my pay-grade'. Quiet quitting is exactly that, employees refusing to go above and beyond their daily job requirements. Plainly put, it is refusing to go the extra mile, and saying 'no' to long work hours and unpaid overtime. A BBC report calls it "acting your wage”.
"You are not outright quitting your job, but you are quitting the idea of going above and beyond. You are still performing your duties, but you are no longer subscribing to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be your life; the reality is it is not, and your worth as a person is not defined by your labour," a TikToker, who goes by the handle @zaidleppelin explains in a reel with the hashtag #quietquitting has over 144 million views.
The trend has been made popular through TikTok, Instagram reels, Tweets and Twitter videos.
Quiet quitting does not mean that you slack off every day. Rather, you turn up on time, do what needs to be done, and leave once you are done. "In a nutshell, quiet quitting is about rejecting the notion that work has to take over one's life and that employees should go above and beyond what their job descriptions entail," writes Yessi Bello Perez, a business journalist at LinkedIn.
A survey by Gallup, an American analytics and advisory company, found that at least 50 per cent of the workforce in the US have already taken to this trend. The survey, conducted in a random sample of 15,091 employees who are above the age of 18, showed a direct correlation between quiet quitting and great resignation as the trend began in the second half of 2021, when there was a large number of resignations.
A decades-old phenomenon
Quiet quitting may have caught the fancy of Gen Z and millennial office-goers post-pandemic, but the tendency to not go above one's paycheck has been around for decades, observes Anthony Klotz ,associate professor at the University of College London’s School of Management. Quiet quitting has been studied under different names, Klotz told BBC. A tough job market, non-transferable skills, and benefits one enjoys at the present company may force one to stay on, but there is always the option to do just what is expected of you.
“Quiet quitting is effectively redrawing boundaries back to the job description so that people aren’t thinking about work 24/7," explains Klotz in the BBC article.
A result of burnout?
While this trend maybe easily dismissed as the result of the rebellious streak of a few Gen Z and Millennial employees, who are overwhelmed by the dreariness of the workplace and overburdened by responsibilities, it is also being perceived as a step in the right direction to avoid burnout, and seizing control of one's life. It is also a refusal to allow your work to define your worth. Ascribing to this trend would possibly mean that you are not available on call round-the-clock, and not willing to burn the midnight oil way too often, or not agreeing to new assignments despite already being burned with the workload.
One of the possible reasons for people to take to this trend could be the conversations around burnout and mental health. Work management platform Asana's 2022 Anatomy of Work revealed that 42 per cent of workers experience burnout, even as 40 per cent of workers think burnout is an inevitable part of success.
The disengagement resulting from months of work-from-home caused by the pandemic may have contributed to the phenomenon. This could also be a sign of employee dissatisfaction, and disaffection toward one's current job and place of work.