Why Quiet Quitting is here to stay, and what we can do about it.
The term ‘quiet quitting’ may be new to our collective lexicon, but is the phenomenon really that novel? According to this Los Angeles Times article, we were already ‘quiet quitting’ in the 1990s—it’s just that, back then, it was called ‘coasting’.
So why the sudden surge in interest? The term came to prominence when a career coach named Bryan Creely mentioned it on his TikTok account, @alifeafterlayoff. In this video, Creely references a Business Insider article on coasting and talks about the growing number of people who, burnt out from hustle culture and taking advantage of a shrinking labor market, are choosing to do only the “minimum amount of work necessary to maintain their position.”
By late August, ‘quiet quitting’ had become the hottest buzzword on social feeds since ‘The Great Resignation’, with Google searches for the term reaching their peak during this time.
However, if we are to truly understand this phenomenon, and what it means for modern businesses and the way they work, it’s necessary to look a little bit deeper.
Acting your wage?
There seems to be a lot of apprehension around quiet quitting and its impact on workplace productivity and business performance, and rightly so. The term carries negative connotations and paints a rather dark picture that some employers may find alarming, one where employees are disengaged and underperforming on an ongoing basis. But, on the other side of the coin, quiet quitting is an attempt to bring balance to the work-life equation. Employees are no longer over-extending their mental and physical capacities to the detriment of their personal well-being; instead, they are choosing to redefine and solidify boundaries, and reclaim a way of life where work is just a part—and not the be-all and end-all—of their existence.
According to this reddit user, the term quiet quitting is misleading, and “working your contract,” “working to rule” and “acting your wage” are much more accurate ways to describe it.
No matter what terminology we use, however, we can’t ignore the fact that quiet quitting is not some flash-in-the-pan trend, but a symptom of a much larger shift.
Going against the grind
The signs are all around us—productivity is no longer seen as the badge of honor it once was, and people are starting to question how relevant it is while seeking better frameworks that support the kind of life they want to live. The subreddit r/antiwork is one such pocket community that exists for people who are “curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas, and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.” Launched in 2013, the subreddit saw an upsurge in followers in late 2021.
Instagram account ‘The Nap Ministry’ has a similar popularity arc. Its creator Tricia Hersey has been advocating the idea of ‘rest is resistance’ since 2016 (and released a book of the same name earlier this year), but saw a huge explosion of followers since the start of the pandemic, numbering in the tens of thousands per day. To her and to many others, it is about “collectively refusing to run ourselves into the ground.”
The anti-productivity or anti-grind culture movement is also reflected in a growing number of books published in the last couple of years, including Jenny Odell’s ‘How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,’ Celeste Headlee’s ‘Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving,’ and Devon Price’s ‘Laziness Does Not Exist.’
Quiet quitting, therefore, is only one note in this growing chorus, and we should be careful not to dismiss it as just another trend or a singular occurrence. Instead, we should step back and take a look at the whole picture and what that means for the way we’ve been working and how we should move forward.
So what can we do about it?
If we view quiet quitting as a gentle form of resistance, of people taking ownership over how they want to work and saying enough is enough, then it is showing us that our current ways of working are unsustainable and pointing the way towards change.
With that in mind, here are some steps employers can take to address the issue:
Prioritize systems over individuals
This New Yorker article explores an intriguing idea. In it, Cal Newport looks at the evolution of the term ‘productivity,’ tracing it all the way back to the ‘The Wealth of Nations’ by Adam Smith, who defined it as “labor that adds value to materials.” This definition later evolved to “output produced per unit of input.” Increasing this metric was important, because it generates surplus value, helps the economy grow, and improves standards of living.
Back then, increasing productivity involved optimizing systems—the most notable being Henry Ford’s moving assembly line. This means the onus of output is removed from the individual and is instead placed on the system. The more efficient the system, the better the output.
However, this kind of systems-based thinking around productivity, for various reasons, was not applied to knowledge work and, according to Newport, “Productivity, for the first time in modern economic history, became personal.” Newport adds that: “More output is possible if you’re willing to steal hours from other parts of your day—from family dinners, or relaxing bike rides—so the imperative to optimize devolves into a game of internal brinkmanship.”
His advice? Reconfigure output away from the individual and back onto systems. This has already successfully been achieved in the tech industry, where instead of demanding greater productivity from engineers, they focus on improving the efficiency of the system. “Leaving individuals to focus on executing their work well, while letting scrutinized systems tackle the allocation and organization of this work, might just be exactly the balance needed to allow growth without dehumanization,” writes Newport.
Build the right culture
As the saying goes, “Change is the only constant,” and it’s a safe bet that you will be continuously pitted against external factors beyond your control. Your best insurance against these shocks will be the investment you put into building a strong culture—a culture that is open and transparent and based on mutual understanding and respect. This webinar on culture add is a great starting point to understand how to build a diverse and robust culture that is communicated from the hiring process onwards.
Be more aware of employees’ needs
This is an important step in building a workplace that is fluid and responsive to change, one that is co-created in partnership with employees and is stronger for it. It can sound like a daunting exercise, especially considering the resources necessary to create this kind of framework across a large organization, but tools can help. For example, Attuned’s psychology-backed AI platform reveals what your employees deeply value and need in order to flourish—i.e. their intrinsic motivators—and gives you actionable insights to address problems long before they start to snowball.
Conclusion
Work, of course, remains essential within our current economic and social environment and trends like quiet quitting and The Great Resignation are inevitable during times of great upheaval. What we need to do is take a step back and take a critical look at how we can adapt the way we work to suit our current context while promoting a more modern and balanced way of life. As Barnaby Lashbrooke wrote in Forbes: “Of course we have to work: to put a roof overhead and food on the table. But life should come first and work should be the enabler.”