Quiet quitting - buzzword or a big step towards battling burnout?

TikTok strikes again, and this time it’s a notion called ‘quiet quitting’ that has caught the attention of employees, employers and those of us who work to mediate and progress the culture within workplaces.

So, what is quiet quitting? Well, the name itself is mildly misleading, as Kat Nicholls points out in her article for Happiful magazine discussing the ‘new workplace buzzword’. It’s a new phrase doing the rounds on the video social media platform which presumes to be a preventative approach to burnout. For Kat, and for us, the phrase essentially is a summation of how more and more of us are now choosing to step-away from ‘the hustle’. You know the mentality that has dominated workplaces for so long, where longest hours equate to hardest worker?

Quiet quitting – whether you agree with the phrase itself – is representative of a choice that many are now making, a decision that has been hugely influenced by the pandemic, the time it gave us to think and allowed us the breathing room to realise what is truly important to us. And funnily enough it wasn’t being at the office, on-site or at our desks until gone 10pm.

And that is a decision to reject a status quo that has for too long dominated and dictated workplaces, with a ripple effect that reaches every aspect of our lives. Whether spoken out loud or simply implied, ‘the hustle’ encourages us to work over and above our contractual hours, it even goes so far as make it aspirational, a highly desirable badge of honour to put work commitments ahead of ourselves, our own families, ahead of even our own wellbeing.

Quiet quitting is presented as an antidote to ‘the hustle’ and the subsequent burnout we have seen so many people suffering with, and also, a chance to remember our own worth outside of our job requirements. And this is the crux of it.

Rather than killing ourselves at work, this is a move towards turning up for our allocated hours, doing our jobs and doing them as well as we can, heading home, and, well, enjoying it. And it’s that simple. When it’s written in black and white, quiet quitting shouldn’t really be a necessary, should it?

Working with businesses and schools to address their internal culture is something we have the?privilege of doing every week. When it comes to wellbeing and mental health support in the workplace, it has unfortunately taken the last few years of struggle to highlight how vital mental health, wellbeing and culture, really are.

Promoting wellbeing and a positive approach to mental health in your place of work, be that in the corporate or educational world, can help prevent stress, create a positive working atmosphere, increase productivity, reduce presenteeism and leavism, leading to a happier, engaged and productive team. It’s thought, in fact, that better mental health support in the business sector could save up to ￡8 billion per year.

We have all had those mornings, when you’re brushing your teeth, just wishing for something to drop in your lap – an excuse, any excuse – to give you a reason to just stay at home and not go to work? How many days have you simply dreaded arriving at work? Or perhaps it’s you who has the job of handling workplace grievances, annoyances and disputes?

Given how much time we all spend at work, it really isn’t a surprise that having a fulfilling job and an enjoyable working environment has a massive impact on our mental health. Working conditions and the environment within which we carry out the majority of our daily grind, can have a huge impact on our mental health. In turn, our mental health can have a significant impact on our performance.

Becky Valentine Exec MBA CMngr FCMI MHFA, Co-owner, Lead – Sustainability, Wellbeing and Building Health and Executive Assistant to Mich Stevenson OBE DL at Spenbeck, said:

A positive outcome from the pandemic has been the realisation by employees of what their priorities actually are.?Enlightened employers are recognising what Dolly Parton sang about all those years ago (!) and are now creating working environments which actively promote authentic and holistic wellbeing and a good home/life balance, enabling better ways to make a living.?The office is increasingly a hub, where people now come to collaborate and co-create, rather than simply jump on the hamster 9 to 5 wheel which inevitably fights motivation and productivity. And where the building health of the physical working environment - with its focus on meeting individual needs - is optimised to help occupants and companies flourish.”?

Evidence has shown us that for a workforce to change its culture around 70% of leadership needs to be on board with those changes. That overriding percentage has to be there in order for change to be influenced and for those positive effects to impact everyone else within an organisation.

We are now working with countless business leaders across the country, collaborating on how they can work to support them and their teams.

Through a combination of engaging with business leaders, and understanding where a business’s gaps and strengths are, we are able to work to create bespoke packages of training to support the development of leadership and levels within management - from understanding their own leadership style to how they can manage others effectively, to recognising unconscious bias, leading with curiosity and empathy.

As we always say, people are without a doubt the biggest resource and asset in any organisation. Leading your people effectively is a choice that will make any business strategy and decision more effective, as without their engagement, any strategy will be undeliverable and unsustainable.?When we work with leadership teams, through developmental training, we collaboratively begin a chain reaction that influences the entire culture of an organisation.

And when that reaction takes hold, that is when the magic starts to happen. Open and honest lines of communication between an enlightened and understanding leader(s) and their team(s) leads to a change in culture. A shift that moves away from the long outdated focus on clocking up a hideous number of hours to be deemed a ‘hard-worker’. Instead, leadership teams which undergo development and coaching work look towards how they can collaborate with and maintain a fulfilled and happy workforce, a workforce full of individuals who feel that they are valued, who can confidently bring issues to the table, and have a tangible balance between work and home which reflects in their own personal wellbeing.?