Recently, a new phrase has emerged in conversations about the workplace and office culture: “silent exit.”
The term has popped up widely this month, trending on Twitter and spawning a TikTok hashtag that has amassed over 30 million views.
“Quiet quitting is the concept of meeting your expectations from the job and not going overboard,” Andrea Bartlett, director of human resources (HR) at Humi, a HR software company, told CTV News Toronto on Wednesday.
Quiet quitters still attend work daily and complete their mandatory tasks, but won’t stick around for extra hours or take on extra projects.
While the term has recently gained currency, the concept itself is not new, Bartlett says, and instead shows the need for reflection in our workplace culture.
“I wouldn’t call it something new — it’s just another name for a concept that has always existed in the workforce,” she said.
She also emphasized that there is nothing wrong with just meeting expectations at work, and that many choose to stick to that line.
“You need to balance your workforce with people who will meet expectations,” she said. “Promotion or climbing the corporate ladder, if you will, may not be important to them, and that’s perfectly fine.”
Instead, her problem with this iteration of the concept is that she says she puts the blame on the employee rather than exploring the bigger picture of workplace culture.
“Workers have become so caught up in the hustle culture that they now have to show their burnout by taking a step back from work to achieve more,” she said.
According to a recent 72-page study of more than 5,500 working Canadians, 35% of them reported experiencing some degree of burnout, and one in four said their job significantly affected their mental health.
Dr. Philip Oreopoulos, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Toronto, says the newfound popularity of quitting quietly reflects patterns seen in a changing job market.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen employers try to squeeze more and more productivity out of workers by paying them the same or less,” he told CTV News Toronto on Wednesday.
“As a result, I think it caused some resentment among the workers, so they moved back to try to consider if there were other alternatives, whether it was to work another job or just work less.”
Similar to recent talk of a “big layoff” among North American workers, Oreopoulas says the quiet layoffs are due to workers feeling unappreciated, underpaid and out of touch with their jobs.
Unfortunately, there can be repercussions for those who choose to stick to the bare minimum, he says, especially in industries where wages reflect the need to be on call at different times, working overtime or doing extra work.
“If you do less than what is expected of you, these workers may get in trouble because the employer may find someone else with the same wage,” he said.
To address issues of employee morale and workplace culture, Bartlett said the province’s first step will be to ensure that companies properly implement the new “Right to Shut Down” policy.
“Policy alone is not enough,” she said. “You need to integrate this policy into behavior in your workplace.”
Ultimately, Oreopoulas says, it’s important that workers feel valued, and that one way to deal with dissatisfaction might be to raise wages.
“I think the best thing employers can do is make sure their employees feel needed and part of the process.”