To be perfectly clear – “Quiet quitting” is not about quitting your job at all; but more about setting boundaries.
The catchphrase quiet quitting is about stopping doing work that people think is beyond what they were hired to do and not getting compensated for. In other words, it is simply stepping back and reassessing your goals and the parameters of your job.
The phenomenon has been picked up by TikTokers where workers are going viral by explaining why they’re jumping on the quiet-quitting bandwagon, reports CBS News.
The “Quiet quitting” phenomenon isn’t a fluke, as experts say it is partly a byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic when millions of workers lost their jobs as the disease shuttered the economy.
Interestingly, The Guardian quotes Maria Kordowicz, an associate professor in organizational behavior at the University of Nottingham and director of its center for interprofessional education and learning, as saying the rise in quiet quitting is linked to a noticeable fall in job satisfaction.
Citing a Gallup workplace poll done in 2021, showed that only 9 percent of workers in the UK were engaged or enthusiastic about their work, ranking 33rd out of 38 European countries.
“Since the pandemic, people’s relationship with work has been studied in many ways, and the literature typically, across the professions, would argue that, yes, people’s way of relating to their work has changed,” Kordowicz said.
Since the end of the pandemic, most people have found new jobs or been rehired, however, the nation’s workforce remains smaller than prior to the health crisis. That is putting more strain on existing employees, who are often asked to do more for the same pay.
And I guess that may have a lot to do with it. People were actually given the time, lots of it, by the way, to sit and think seriously about what they were doing and why.
Many people, like my granddaughter, found that they could do their type of work from home just as easily and more effectively than in an office. This means that as an employee, she still excels at her job, but she doesn’t work overtime to do it.
The drastic workforce shift during the pandemic largely brought on the rise of this behavior, said S. Chris Edmonds, founder, and CEO of The Purposeful Culture Group, a Colorado-based consultancy that helps senior leaders create a positive work culture.
It looks like now, we will have to figure out what our boundaries are, and this means management and its employees will have to get together and work it out in a meaningful way.
