Hustle culture came about after the Great Recession of 2008, and this mentality became more prevalent during the rise of Silicon Valley’s start-ups. Now, the pandemic has reshaped the way employees approach their jobs.
According to LinkedIn, “quiet quitting” means rejecting the notion that work has to take over one’s life.
Recently, numerous Tiktok users have gone viral for creating videos explaining this trend, and simply put, it is doing enough to get by at the office and not going above and beyond one’s pay grade. That could mean clocking in a minute before your shift, leaving exactly when your shift ends, not taking the initiative in office projects, and not participating in anything not included in your job description.
This shift in the workforce is sweeping through offices globally and locally, with some saying this is part two of the “great resignation” that management professor Anthony Klotz coined in May 2021.
Meanwhile, several business owners disagree with the movement. A Facebook group named “Startup PH” has a thread asking its members, who most probably are startup business owners or are planning to be as the group name suggests, what their opinions are, and a few of them aren’t taking it well.
A netizen commented, “In a startup setting, unless you’re one of those heavily funded ones, you do need people to go above and beyond what they were hired to do.” However, some others agreed that it is for the best and nothing is wrong with setting boundaries, which is the entire premise of quiet quitting.
The gist of the quiet quitting movement is to resist the unjust practice of exploitative employers, a few being hiring one employee to do the job of two, mandatory and unpaid overtime, a promotion without any salary increase, and low-balling applicants, especially fresh graduates. Employers should stop expecting employees to go above and beyond without proper compensation. An occasional pizza at work doesn’t count.
Moreover, employers tend to dangle a promotion in front of their employees to encourage them to work hard, but not every employee wants one, which employers tend to overlook. As a result, those doing their job just fine unjustly receive the label of underachievers for not going the extra mile.
A company should not create a work environment that only flourishes with insane pressure with a bunch of burnt-out employees but one that strikes a good balance between work and life.
With the rise of “anti-work,” employers may struggle to find talent to join the workforce if we fail to dismantle the status quo that is employer-centric for the most part. People are beginning to question and challenge the five-day, 40-hour, and 9-to-5 workweek.
Millions of employees have now realized they don’t have to subscribe to the toxicity of the hustle culture. They have taken matters into their own hands by not burning themselves out deliberately through quiet quitting.
As the world learns and accepts living with the pandemic, with the comfort of working at home slowly ending, employees are exploring and weighing their options. They’re even going as far as willing to take a significant pay cut and risk their stability for a workplace that offers a more flexible schedule and an employer that values their most important asset: their employees.