Imagine a workplace where doing your job description is considered enough. No more unpaid overtime or replying to emails out of hours. Carly Gibbs meets the employees who do it.
“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t work after 5pm,” Ian says matter-of-factly.
Emails, and calls to his work cellphone, aren’t answered until he clocks back on the next business day.
“My personal phone number is on my file at work. If someone really wants to ring me, they can, and we’ll talk about it, but I’m certainly not cranking open the laptop and writing a 20-page document,” he says.
The Bay of Plenty software consultant practices “quiet quitting”.
Despite the name, it has nothing to do with quitting your job.
It means doing what your job demands but quitting the extra duties.
“I recently learned about this term called ‘quiet quitting’ where you’re not outright quitting your job, but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond,” says Zaiad Leppelin, a TikTok user with 16,900 followers.
“You are still performing your duties, but you are no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentally that work has to be our life.”
Millennials and Generation Z workers were initially the groups of employees who gave the trend a name when it emerged last year on social media. Now its popularity is expanding, particularly in a time of economic tumult when balance is needed.
Sarah, a real estate agent, is a quiet quitter and resigned from her job at a mainstream real estate brand for a smaller boutique agency because of additional expectations from her employer.
The 36-year-old wasn’t paid unless she sold a house, but there were added expectations of what she needed to do to endorse and help advertise her employer’s brand, including participating in community morning tea shouts or giving blood.
“At the end of the day, the people who are paying me are my clients and if I do a good job, they’ll refer me on. I don’t need to be buying into smoke and mirrors.
“People just want to see that you get the job done and you do it well.”
Nick, 23, works in retail and says he does his job well but he’s run ragged.
“I’m running around doing everything, while people getting paid more than me walk around on their phones. I said to a workmate the other day, ‘I’ve decided if they’re paying me minimum wage I’m going to be a minimum wage worker’.”
Chris, who works in the service industry, says as a teenager in the 1990s her generation bought into the notion that if “you go above and beyond, you’ll get rewarded for it”.
Now aged 41, despite working hard and taking on extra responsibilities outside her job description, she’s still not a homeowner.
Lucrative incentives such as time-and-a-half for weekend work or a day in lieu were long gone by the time she was an employed adult.
“This was standard in the 1980s and phased out in the 90s. By the 00s only certain jobs had it, and now I only really hear about it on stat holidays.”
Alice, a hospital nurse, is in line for a promotion but is having second thoughts and considering quiet quitting.
“The amount of work and expectation, plus the office politics, it’s not worth it,” she says, although she adds that her personality is that of a people pleaser so it’s tough.
She’s also in a profession that makes it less easy.
Saying ‘no’ to burnout
Since the pandemic, an increasing number of workers have grown tired of not getting recognition and financial compensation for putting in extra hours.
They’re saying no to burnout, and instead focusing on work-life balance.
The movement is centred around self-preservation and “acting your wage”.
Programme evaluator Emma, 32, tried to quiet quit but found it difficult.
Trying to deliver her contract during allocated hours wasn’t possible, as her to-do list continued to grow.
She’d sustained a higher workload because she could get things done and was often the “fixer”, but wasn’t paid more or appropriately supported.
She decided to quiet quit - but found it “equally as stressful”, given the workload and team pressures were still there.
She eventually quit altogether and has gone into independent contracting.
“I’m now in control of my own time and can trust the quality of support provided by my associates.”
Ian, the software consultant, says work was once his life but it cost him his marriage and freedom.
“For the last 25 years, I covered customers in Europe and parts of the United States while living overseas. All this while earning a high salary and accessing expense accounts, flights, and hotels. Now I work for an IT consultancy in Auckland and live in Rotorua on a comparatively low salary.
“I travel to the office once or twice a month and am not interested in promotion or progression. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to have the job I have, but I also know life is for living, not so much for working, and that is the difference.”
Turning 60, losing both his parents within two years and being made redundant made him re-evaluate his priorities.
“You look at it and think, ‘no, I’m not going to give every waking hour to my employer; I’m not going to work until 9pm; I’m not going to jump on a plane and put my entire life on hold because it suits them. That doesn’t work anymore.’
“I know people who are still working those sorts of jobs and they even go on holiday with their laptop.”
Corporate roles pay well but there’s no reward worth sacrificing your life for, he says, and he’s now taken a job where his home and work life are more in balance.
Once you get on the treadmill of overworking it’s hard to get off, he reckons, and it’s up to individuals to make their own “life rules”.
His employer still expects “their pound of flesh” but there is respect and understanding between them.
“If you’re going to go and throw your weight around and behave like a 5-year-old and stamp your feet and hold your breath and go, ‘can’t, shan’t’, well, you’ve still got to perform your tasks.”
Mutual respect
CEO of the Rotorua Business Chamber Bryce Heard, says his personal view is that any successful workplace should include “a lot of goodwill between employers and employees”.
Heard says this will include mutual respect.
“No employee should be expected to work extraordinary hours for little or no reward. By the same token, nor should employees use the old ‘work to rule’ behaviours to make the employer suffer.
“Goodwill means that we should all treat others as we would like them to treat us. It is in danger of being lost in today’s world. Some say that life is a mirror and acting with goodwill promotes goodwill in return.
“Developing a culture of openness, with shared goals and objectives will usually ensure that these situations do not arise.”
Ian works his expected hours and works hard.
“I am very conscious of what I’m doing.”
And when he goes to the office he travels on his own time so he can navigate traffic when it’s not busy, therefore removing the stress of putting in the required 7.5 hours while dealing with the traffic encountered on the way.
He books and pays for his accommodation to “remove the leverage of where you stay and the perceived lifestyle”.
“It’s about having the confidence to do that. It’s on my terms.
“Is that part of quiet quitting or is that taking control? That’s the point I think people miss as well. Are you being proactive in your decisions and what’s the rationale behind it? How are you doing it?”
Work-life balance
Sarah, the real estate agent, says she’s always been a hard worker but she wanted to do things on her terms, too.
After years of working in environments where support staff were required to stay on after-hours without additional pay, it’s nice to work for herself.
“If you didn’t stay, you weren’t a team player. Employees who do are seen as better than the rest, but are they better than the rest? Or are they just more usable?”
Leigh, who is Filipino, says for some cultures working hard is the norm and in New Zealand, you work even harder.
“In all my [fast food restaurant] jobs I move heaven and earth for my employers because I am so grateful for my life here.”
But at times she felt like a “slave”.
In one job, she had one salary increase in five years; 12-hour days were the norm, along with training and covering for staff without extra pay.
“It took a toll on my health. I am now hypersensitive and prediabetic. My stressful job is one of the root causes of why I’m in this situation. I don’t think there’s a balance in my life.”
Donna, who works in community mental health, says she and her colleagues are exhausted.
“We’ve got a great boss, we work with fab people, but we are just really unplugged. Way past compassion fatigue. We think it’s from feeling constantly overwhelmed and incapable of satisfying all of the demands from all directions. We’ve just disengaged and do what we have to do.”
Massey University psychologist associate professor Kirsty Ross says quiet quitting links to self-care and self-compassion.
“People are very mindful of needing to maintain their wellbeing as there is more awareness of the impact of stress on health,” she says.
“It’s interesting that we consider working our paid hours as silent quitting instead of aiming for a work-life balance.
“There are times when I think that working extra is needed in a job and people are often willing to do that short-term when it is for a specific purpose, but when that extra becomes an expectation and a norm, work becomes invisible and unrecognised and people are now reluctant to do that.”
People are living in line with their values, and overall health - including time with family - is more of a focus with an increased awareness of mental health, she says.
“Managing that stress involves either reducing demands and/or increasing resources and maintaining a manageable work-life achieves both of those aims.”
- Names of some employees have been changed to protect their privacy.
Combatting quiet quitting
- Look for a company with greater flexibility to get you re-engaged.
- Where possible, use clear criteria to grade work to be done, such as ‘critical, important, moderate, and low’. Employers, help your staff with this.
- For perfectionists, define realistic expectations and know when it’s okay to say, ‘That’s good enough’.
- For everyone in the office, set the timer on your email to let it drop Monday morning at eight. Spend time doing things not work-related so that you’re ready for the workweek.
- Employers, thank people for their accomplishments. It’s about helping them see their worth as colleagues and human beings.
- Forbes
