Lives and working situations have changed ever since COVID-19 hit, and Quiet Quitting has been making a noise in the workplace. This trend is where employees put in minimal effort to get through the workday. Although this trend is disturbing, we must consider some contributing factors.
"Quiet quitters" make up at least 50% of the U.S. workforce -- probably more, Gallup finds.
Quite Quitting- What Is It?
The trend toward quiet quitting -- the idea spreading virally on social media that millions of people are not going above and beyond at work and just meeting their job description -- could get worse. This is a problem because most jobs today require extra effort to collaborate with coworkers and meet customer needs.
U.S. employee engagement took another step backward during the second quarter of 2022, with the proportion of engaged workers remaining at 32% but the balance of actively disengaged increasing to 18%. The ratio of employed to actively disengaged employees is now 1.8 to 1, the lowest in almost a decade.
Many quiet quitters fit Gallup's definition of being "not engaged" at work- people who do the minimum required and are psychologically detached from their job. This describes half of the U.S. workforce. Everyone else is engaged (32%) or actively disengaged (18%). The latter are "loud quitters." Actively disengaged employees tend to have most of their workplace needs unmet and spread their dissatisfaction- they have been the most vocal in TikTok posts that have generated millions of views and comments. Most employees who are not engaged or actively disengaged are already looking for another job.
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Quiet quitting didn't become a movement in the workplace until after COVID-19 hit. What is essential about the quiet quitting trend is that it's waking all of us up to an economic situation in which many are forced to take jobs just to make ends meet and to an economic climate that makes it more challenging than ever for people to make a living doing what they love. To break the pattern of quiet quitting, this is the time to follow your passion so that you're not just showing up somewhere to make a buck.
The Decrease of Employee Engagement
Another recent Gallup survey found that employee engagement in the United States is falling across all generations, especially among younger Americans. Among those born after 1989, 54% call themselves unengaged, meaning they'll show up to do the minimum required but not much else.
In an interview with Paige West about the "Quiet-quitting" and Anti-Work movement, she mentioned leaving the corporate consulting world for the gig economy. Paige was a digital creator who graduated from college in 2020 with an engineering degree. According to her, she left because she was not finding fulfillment in her nine-to-five job anymore. She saw so many opportunities outside the essential nine-to-five corporate world she wanted to get into.
When asked if she worries about her future employment in case the activities that she was currently engaged in don't pan out, she confidently said that she might be quietly quitting but still doing her job rightfully at the time; hence, Paige was confident that if they call back her employer when she was still in the corporate world, they would happily say that she still did a great job and everything she has done thus far, nor any activities Paige was engaged from the time she was building up her business and doing freelance opportunities, would prove that as well.
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