Quiet? Yes. Quitting? No.
some thoughts on #quietquitting
MANAGER: “How come you are not working?”
EMPLOYEE: “There’s nothing to do!”
MANAGER “Well, pretend you are working.”
EMPLOYEE “Why don’t you pretend I am working? You get paid more than me, you fantasise. Knock yourself out.”
Bill Hicks discussed the concept of #quietquitting decades before it became a phrase.
Much has been made of it, as summarised in this Tiktok video.
Clearly it struck a nerve.
A generation ago it was called ‘work to rule’, where you do only what you are contracted to do and no more. No more evening checking of emails, no more arriving half an hour early to be ready for the start of the day, no more working through a lunch break. The idea of it being out of the ordinary is not new either, it has been typically used as a form of industrial action.
Gallup’s recent ‘State of the Global Workplace’ report has some SHOCKING figures.
Only one in five employees say they are ‘engaged at work’, and only one of three employees are ‘thriving in their overall well-being’.
Recent YouGov polling shows how this varies across age groups. If there is a single graph which best summarises different attitudes to work by generations it is this one.
These views are well grounded. As one commentator put it ‘quietly fired’ would be a more appropriate phrase.
Plenty of Gen Z employees may be quitting, but more broadly the informal contract between employer and employee has broken down. It could even be said the same is happening between one generation and the others.
There may be plenty of jobs around but the same cannot be said of careers. Prospects to get beyond minimum/living wage work are limited and automation has replaced a lot of middle leader opportunities which would have been their next stage.
I had one Gen Zer say to me recently that they found out the margin between their current job and a management position was so low there was no motivation to move up. What is more, these kinds of decisions are taken so far away from the workplace that the sense of powerlessness exists with those at all levels.
The endless drive for efficiency and alignment has led to a position where many employers do not offer to employees the kind of flexibility which used to be seen as standard. Consequently it does not come back in return.
There is a lack of dialogue and a lack of control.
#genz #generationz #quietquitting
