Story at a glance
- The latest buzz term to hit social media platforms is “quiet quitting,” which speaks to the need among younger workers to have better harmony between their work lives and personal lives.
- The term “quiet quitting” means to stop going above and beyond in the workplace.
- The idea behind “quiet quitting” is not new, but the recent social media attention around it has caused much-needed conversations about work-life balance.
Pandemic exhaustion fueled by the constant accessibility created by remote work has, in part, led to the most recent workplace trend, “quiet quitting,” some experts say.
Remedying burnout by taking it easy at work is nothing new. But a recent trend of Millennial and Gen Z workers turning to TikTok to talk about “quiet quitting” has given the idea new life.
Now, “quiet quitting” is the newest buzz term making the rounds on social media with some praising the trend as a much-needed cultural shift while critics of the term are calling it the wrong solution to burnout.
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Instead, the phrase refers to a cultural shift among U.S. workers of opting out of “hustle culture” and not going above and beyond in the workplace.
“It’s not quitting its basically self-protection,” said Wayne Pernell, a clinical psychologist and leadership expert. “People are saying work is important but so is the rest of my life. Work doesn’t own me.”
Before the pandemic, many U.S. workers subscribed to “hustle culture” or the idea of going above and beyond in the workplace to impress an employer into giving a promotion, a raise, or to simply avoid the chopping block during a round of layoffs.
Another aspect of “hustle culture” is the taking on of a “side gig” to deal with the rising cost of living. Over 40 percent of workers admit to having a side gig, according to Bankrate survey.
U.S. workers had to hustle even harder once COVID-19 caused massive shutdowns.
In the first nine months of 2020, about 9.6 million people lost their jobs in the United States, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Closed businesses and shelled-out companies created a tight labor market, forcing many of the workers who kept their jobs during the pandemic to pick up the slack.
“Employees and their engagement went up 10-fold because they were like I’m grateful I still have a job; my company is still alive. I want to keep working and I have to still pay my bills,” Tiffani Martinez, human resources director at Otter Public Relations, told Changing America. “So, everyone right out of the gate of COVID went full double down.”
And since most U.S. workers were stuck inside for a large portion of the pandemic and constantly reachable by their computer or phones, the boundary between work time and personal time became heavily blurred, according to Daniela Wolfe, a social worker and work-life balance expert.
“When the pandemic started, we were all in a place of confusion,” said Pernell. “How is any work going to get done? And then we realized, well, if we work remotely, that’s awesome.”
“People were logging in and checking email at 6:30 in the morning and do some work and then break for lunch which was easy because it was right there, but they would eat at their desk and then before you knew it was dinner time and then ‘oh well I’ll check the email one more time.’ And they were working 12, 14, 16-hour days.”
The stress of the pandemic compounded by the stress of constant availability led to burnout and prompted many to reorganize priorities.
“It made them stop and reevaluate that you get one body…and you’ve been neglecting it,” Martinez added. “People were like, ok my body is important, my home life is important.”
While critics of the term believe that it is an unhealthy attitude that, as Ariana Huffington put it in a now viral LinkedIn post, “will lead to quitting in life,” supporters, like Pernell, hold the belief that “quiet quitting” or rather a “quiet revolution” will make it ok to not be defined by work.
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