Quiet Quitting – What Does It Mean For You?

The latest conversation within the workplace is ‘Quiet Quitting’. Contrary to popular belief, and regardless of how it may sound, it?doesn’t?refer to quitting your job.

What is quiet quitting??

It simply means working to your job description and not a thing more. You’re quitting going above and beyond your duties. It refers to setting workplace boundaries and saying no more. No more taking late meetings and answering work calls/emails outside of your work hours.?

These employees are doing the bare minimum to get their job done but are rejecting the westernised hustle culture.?

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What’s the reason for this movement??

With the pandemic came a huge number of employees working more flexible hours, which in turn brought workplace boundaries being crossed. Quiet Quitting has been a huge topic of discussion, and debate, on TikTok and LinkedIn amongst young professionals who are feel workplace burn-out and are choosing to prioritise their work-life balance and mental health over saying yes.?

Conversations surrounding Quiet Quitting have heard young workers describe their working overtime with no reward as exhausting and exploitative. Workers have been speaking up about their experience of taking on more responsibilities without the progression being reflected in their salary.?

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Positive or negative??

Depending on whom you speak with, you’ll get a very different opinion – employees or employers for instance.?

On one hand, many agree with the movement of Quiet Quitting where overworked working-class people have every right to set these workplace boundaries against employers who are piling on extra duties, without being paid to do so. Many are applauding the workers who are dialling back on their work efforts and overworking.?

However, many have disagreed with the evolution of Quiet Quitting, labelling it as laziness and describing these workers as slacking.?

Pattie Ehsaei, a speaker of female empowerment and workplace decorum, posted a?TikTok?where she argued that workers who ‘quiet quit’ will go “absolutely nowhere in life” and stated that promotions and salary increases will only go to workers where their effort matches the progression and strongly disagrees that doing the bare minimum will do this.?

As a business, how can you help your employees??

According to many, the reasons employees are practising Quiet Quitting vary from exploitation and job dissatisfaction to poor communication and discomfort in discussing salary.?

Unless business find ways to ensure a positive employee experience, Quiet Quitting will inevitably continue. We’ve got a few tips for employers to test out to build a stronger relationship with their employees to stop disengagement, lack of understanding and resentment.?

• Speak with your employees about stressful workplace situations?
• Discuss realistic workloads with your employees to understand and respect boundaries?
• Discuss?future career goals?and explore ways to reach them?
• Promote words of encouragement and praise within your company to ensure employees feel valued and recognised for their hard work
• Discuss expectations, career progression opportunities and salaries openly at appraisals?
• Regularly ask for employee feedback to improve upon company culture?
• Introduce regular and informal check-ins between employee and line manager?

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Essentially, “Quiet Quitting” is a movement of employees doing the bare minimum and rejecting going above and beyond their job description. Ultimately, employees are practising this behaviour because they are experiencing job dissatisfaction and/or are feeling undervalued.?

With an open-door policy, feedback can bring?open conversations?between employees and their employers. A win-win situation of motivation, burn-out avoidance and building more positive relationships can be born from this.