Quiet Quitting

Quiet quitting is what we're calling it now: people aren't physically leaving their jobs, they're just renouncing the hustle culture and abandoning "the idea of going above and beyond at work".

It looks like employee disengagement, but it's a bit more than that because it's arriving in the wake of the Great Resignation and pandemic burnout. It's become more pronounced as employers want their employees back in the office, but for a lot of people the old ways don't appeal - as Bob Dylan once said, "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more". I'm okay to work for Maggie, but on my terms, and that doesn't include shoveling manure down on the farm.

In the middle of the pandemic, many people found that working from home became more like living at the office. Boundaries got blurred, and now people want their lives back. Quiet quitting is one version of that, where people are putting up barriers to more work, passively refusing to make any discretionary effort, simply saying no or staying silent.

Personally, I think quiet quitting is a sign of management failure. When we talk about more human workplaces, we're talking about managers having the awareness and the skills to take a personal interest in their people and their welfare rather than treating them like units of production. Everything flows from that, and nothing good happens without it.

I posted recently that not feeling valued by their organsiation or their manager was rated as most important to peoples' decision to leave. It makes sense that it's also the most important reason people quietly quit, even as they stay in the organisation.

Who can blame them?