Quiet Quitting.
This trend has been gaining publicity in the media lately, notably on social media platforms like TikTok and Twitter. Research suggests that it could be a direct result of the all too typical corporate practice of prioritizing the bottom line above everything else.
What is quiet quitting?
In an interview with KTVU, St. Mary’s Professor Michal Strahilevitz, defined “quiet quitting” as setting boundaries with corporate employers or managers by quietly pushing back on demands outside the scope of their job descriptions for which they receive no compensation (Strahilevitz, 2022). Strahilevitz lists several forms of quiet quitting including: leaving the office promptly at the end of the scheduled workday, not checking work emails on weekends, and outright refusing or doing the absolute bare minimum on tasks that fall outside the job description.
Explaining the rationale as mainly avoiding burnout from being overworked, Strahilevitz (2022) advises companies that the quiet quitting should be seen as a sign that employers should be providing more than just financial compensation, noting that it is ultimately up to employers “…to make the time at work healthy, and that doesn’t just mean physically healthy. It means emotionally and mentally healthy.”
If employers continue loading employees with ever-increasing stress levels in an effort to increase their bottom line—all the while decreasing down time, showing little to no appreciation for employee effort and providing insufficient reward, companies should expect lower productivity and ultimately, mass resignations.
The idea that the bottom line is the most important element in business is antiquated and squarely in the realm of what social psychologist Douglas McGregor termed “Theory X” thinking.
This line of thinking is damaging to the employer/employee relationship, as it can create a hostile work environment where one or both parties build resentment toward the other as the employer’s belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy with the company’s bottom line getting hit the hardest (Markwell, 2004).
As quiet quitting becomes more prevalent following a nearly 3-year-long global pandemic, companies and even individuals who have clung to the antiquated Theory X mindset been openly balking that “people just don’t want to work anymore.”
While that myth has been perpetuated by corporations during The Great Resignation fallout spurred by Covid, this is not the first decade that fallacy has been pushed.
Do people really just not want to work?
Labor historian Joseph McCartin explains that the trope of the employee who simply refused to work can be found as far back as the 1870’s (Constanz, 2022). “There was a recession in 1873 and there was a ‘vagabond scare,’ they called it at the time: People were hitting the road to avoid a working life and trying to sort of bum around the country,” when in actuality, McCartin explains, migrant workers were simply looking elsewhere for work, while the relevant issues of hard labor, physical wear and tear on the worker’s body and devastatingly insufficient wages were conveniently dismissed by employers and society at large (Constantz, 2022).
Now, in the aftermath of the pandemic, employers are once again seeing workers leaving in droves and complaining that no one wants to work. The only difference is that this time it is not necessarily because of Industrial Era-level physical labor (although that can be a factor depending on the job) but because employees are simply demanding more from employers than they are willing to provide in terms of remote flexibility, mental health support, and work/life balance.
Perhaps most impactful of all, employees have become increasingly resistant to performing free labor under the guise of “being a team player”.
Corporate management consultant Emily Rose McRae expressed the insidious unsaid half of the myth of no one wanting to work: “Nobody wants to work—for what I want to give them,” (Constanz, 2022). Companies must understand that their responsibilities to employees do not end at wages.
-The Penguins
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