Homer Simpson passes his laziness on to his children. Already in the 90s the father said to his daughter: “Lisa, if you don’t like your job, don’t go on strike. You go there every day and you only do it reluctantly”. Today there is a new term for this Homeric attitude in the American animated series “The Simpsons”: Quiet Quitting.
For jobs and vacancies in the IT sector, see also the job market at heise online:
The social media hype was triggered by American Zaid Kahn. He defines Quiet Quitting this way: “You don’t quit your job, but you don’t work more than your contract specifies.” Literally translated, ‘Quiet Quitting’ means ‘quiet abandonment’. With a little imagination, this can turn into “inner resignation”. But neither is the case. Quiet Quitters like their job, but aren’t ready for extra work.
Refused unpaid overtime
There’s nothing dishonorable about quietly giving up, they’re just honoring their contract. You work as hard as he intends. Work emails are no longer read during free time, unpaid overtime is rejected. Those who quit quietly can take advantage of the current situation on the labor market. There is a labor shortage everywhere. Many companies are happy if they still have staff and find new ones. Many employers would rather accept the service to govern than not be able to offer their clients other services.
Overtime is part of the daily work for many employees in Germany. On average, in 2021, 4.5 million people worked more than what was stipulated in the contract. This corresponds to 12% of the total of 37.8 million employees, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office. For the most part, the amount of overtime was limited to a few hours a week. About a third said they did less than five hours of overtime and 59% said it was less than ten hours. However, 29% of those affected worked at least 15 hours of overtime a week. Overtime is mostly done in the form of paid and unpaid overtime or flows into a working time account, which can be used to offset it later in the form of flextime. Of people who had worked more than contractually agreed in 2021, nearly a quarter (22%) worked unpaid overtime. Quiet quitters are most likely not among them.
Young people, in particular, give up quietly
There are not so few of this group of people. Currently only four percent of German employees are planning to leave their employer. But 34 percent admit they only do what’s necessary at work. The US cloud service provider RingCentral came to these conclusions in a study. It was examined how satisfied German employees are with their employment and what is their motivation at the moment. To this end, 1,001 employees aged 21 to 65 were surveyed online.
It is striking that silent quitting is particularly prevalent among the younger age group: nearly half of 21-34 year olds describe themselves as silent quitters. The phenomenon decreases with increasing age. Only 18% of 55-65 year olds associate themselves with this trend. On the one hand, Quiet Quitting is the result of a social change that sees personal fulfillment more in private life than in work. On the other hand, the phenomenon also seems to be an expression of a certain dissatisfaction at work, the authors of the study suspect. The survey shows that only every second employee in Germany is truly satisfied with their job.
Emotional connection vs. cold self-interest
Quiet quitting is a term that does not originate from research, but according to business psychologist Uwe Kanning of the Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, it has many points of contact with concepts from business psychology. “What they all have in common is that they essentially revolve around one question: How strongly do employees identify with their job duties and are committed to their employer?” For him, the concept of silent dismissal lies between a strong emotional bond with the employer on the one hand and the employee’s coldly calculated self-interest on the other. “They set clear boundaries for their employer at the interface between their professional and private lives,” Kanning says.
In the opinion of the business psychologist, the possible causes of Quiet Quitting can only be guessed at. “When more and more is being asked for without giving anything in return, when unpaid overtime becomes a matter of course rather than the exception, Quiet Quitting can serve as something of a lifeline.” However, before those affected seriously consider resigning, they show their employer the red card in the form of work to govern. Others react in this way to the forced use of first names, self-righteous company values and the employer’s desire that their employees spend as much free time as possible in the company gym or at after-work parties. “This causes resistance,” says Kanning. The more pressure you apply, the stronger the resistance. Still others find themselves in a changed life situation: They have become parents or have set new goals in life after a serious illness.
No ‘expression of an increasingly sluggish workforce’
Kanning surely doesn’t think it wise to “demonize quiet abandonment as an expression of an increasingly lazy workforce or devalue it as the ideology of freedom-loving people.” The first perspective ignores the very different motivations of those affected. The second fails to fully recognize that for millions of people work and life are not fundamentally contradictory to each other.
The key is probably right here. “People are very different and it’s important to do as much justice to the individual as possible,” says Kanning. If this were implemented correctly in HR work, the silent quit discussion could lead to happier employees.
(axk)
