A new finding suggests that over a quarter (26 percent) of employees are burnt out and a fifth (21 percent) feel under-appreciated. To combat this problem, many workers are turning to the new ways of coping such as trends like Bare Minimum Mondays, Quiet Quitting and Freedom Fridays in a bid to battle burnout. The data relates to workers employed in the U.K.
These trends have been appearing on social media platforms like TikTok, where ‘Bare Minimum Mondays’ has been receiving attention. Practicing this, employees seek to do the least possible work required to avoid burnout. Many reported they undertaken this approach in order to avoid the soc-called ‘Sunday Scaries’ (experienced by 7 in 10 (63 percent) of workers).
With the other social media memes, it seems to be a case of ‘forget four day weeks’, since 65 percent of employees already take it easy on Fridays. These trends appear to be relatively new developments since almost half (47 percent) of employees said they had reduced their level of effort at work over the past 1-2 years, working over a third (35 percent) less hours now on average. Freedom Fridays are most popular with millennials as almost three quarters (72%) are regularly finishing up early.
These findings come from Money.co.uk business loans experts, who surveyed 2,000 UK employees to explore the different generations’ attitudes to work and burnout coping mechanisms.
Breaking the data down by age group, the survey found that the number of people participating in Bare Minimum Mondays declines in the oldest age group. With burnout becoming a hot-topic in recent years, it seems that younger generations are more aware of coping mechanisms and techniques to avoid it.
In terms of another trend, ‘Quiet Quitting’ sees half (54 percent) of workers cutting workloads. ‘Quiet Quitting’ means completing one’s minimum work requirements without going above and beyond or bringing work home after hours. Older workers are most likely to work the hardest, but even so, half of them admit to ‘Quiet Quitting’.
Just over 3 in 5 (61 percent) employees surveyed aged 25-34 said they currently partake in the ‘Quiet Quitting’, followed by over half (52 percent) of those aged 35-44 and 18-24 (51 percent), half (50 percent) of those aged 45-54 and over 2 in 5 (42 percent) of those aged over 55 years who said the same. This is a trend that is clearly popular across all generations.
Table showing the TikTok trends popularity among different generations/age groups:
| Age Group | % regularly engage in Bare Minimum Mondays | % admitted to Quiet Quitting | % take advantage of Freedom Fridays |
| 18-24 (Gen Z) | 63% | 51% | 64% |
| 25-34 (Young millennials) | 67% | 61% | 72% |
| 35-44 (Older millennials) | 61% | 52% | 67% |
| 45-54 (Gen X) | 50% | 50% | 61% |
| 55+ (Boomers) | 34% | 42% | 35% |
It would seem, from these data trends, that employers need to consider improved processes and policies for the workplace otherwise simply increasing management work requirements leads to lower productivity, employee resistance, and eventual burnout.
