The next employee trend your company may want to look out for is called quiet quitting, and apparently it’s a real thing.
It generally refers to employees who decide not to go above and beyond their stated work assignments and hours and to let the chips fall where they may.
As Time Magazine reports: The movement comes in the wake of a global pandemic that caused employees to reimagine what work could look like, considering the potentials of extending remote work, not working much on Fridays, or in some cases, amid the Great Resignation, not working at all. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and CEO at Thrive, wrote in a viral LinkedIn post, “Quiet quitting isn’t just about quitting on a job, it’s a step toward quitting on life.”
‘With worries of an economic slowdown swirling, productivity levels are a major concern to company executives. U.S. nonfarm worker productivity in the second quarter has fallen 2.5% since the same period last year, its steepest annual drop since 1948, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Companies are now looking at productivity scales as a metric for excellence, with some going as far as moderating employees’ keyboard activity. Major tech companies like Google are signaling that they are slowing hiring and could lay off staff amid concerns about overall productivity.’
But, says Johnny C. Taylor Jr., President and CEO of Society for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest HR society, “remote work has caused severe burnout, Zoom fatigue, and made it harder for some workers to take breaks from home. “I don’t know a company in America that is not sensitized to burnout and the need for employees to step away from the workplace for their mental health.”