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The Real Problem Behind Quiet Quitting And Quiet Hiring

When “quiet quitting” emerged last summer, the workforce was divided into two groups: those who stick to their job descriptions and those who don’t.

Discussions about quiet quitting emerged when a viral TikTok video described the act as limiting your involvement in work that extends beyond the job you were hired to do. As awareness about quiet quitting grew, so did the backlash. What young Millennials and Gen-Zers viewed as a healthy work-life balance, older employers interpreted as a poor work ethic and sign of entitlement.

Like most contentious topics trending in the media, it wasn’t long before quit quitting lost traction to something more novel. Taking its place has been the new—but equally silent trend—quiet hiring.

Quiet hiring is when employers give their employees additional tasks so they can avoid the time and financial costs of hiring someone new. Although the term for quiet quitting appeared relatively recently, it's by no means new to the workplace. Adding more tasks to an employee’s role is one of several reasons why companies hire exempt, salaried employees to begin with. Alternatively, they could hire gig workers to do the job just as easily without having to provide benefits like health insurance and paid time off.

Quiet hiring, therefore, doesn’t seem to name a new employer trend as much as it identifies the growing disconnect between younger generations and traditional standards in the workforce. By drawing attention to an unspoken expectation, the term “quiet hiring” attempts to define the workplace as a reality different from what it has always been.

Identifying hiring as “quiet” implies a link to quiet quitting, suggesting quiet hiring is an employer’s tactical response to employees’ who limit their responsibilities at work. This is truly not the case.

This has created a narrative that depicts the workplace as an unspoken game of tug-of-war between employers and employees, both of whom will resort to deceptive tactics in pursuit of their own beneficial outcome. The result is stagnation. Employees don’t allot companies more time and energy because they view them as takers, while companies don’t give employees more stakes in the organization because companies haven’t gained any sustenance to give.

This knot in the workplace stems from the misconception that going the extra mile at work equates to sacrifice. In the short-term, yes—putting in the extra hours comes with side effects of fatigue, a messy apartment, and poor social life. But in the long-term, going above and beyond often is one of the key ways to create more career capital—skills, knowledge, personality traits, and connections that give you freedom to create the career you want. Want to have a larger impact on the world? Receive more support for your ideas? Have more flexibility to work from where you want? None of these things can be completely achieved with a mindset of quiet quitting.

So let’s take a deeper look at quiet hiring… By taking on additional roles and contributing more to the workplace, employees are not just investing in the company—they’re investing in themselves. Research published by Gartner HR in 2021 reports that 58% of the workforce needs new skills to get their jobs done, and that the total number of skills required for a single job has been increasing by 10% year-over-year since 2017. To make yourself invaluable to a company, you need to show up, do the work, learn, and… do even better work. In other words, the best insurance policy in today’s unstable job market is to run in the direction opposite of quiet quitting.

But a question remains—if the benefits of taking on more responsibilities in the workplace are so crucial to long-term success, why are Millennial and Gen Z employees set on quiet quitting?

The answer can be found from information that’s already been gathered. Gallup has studied employee engagement in the workplace for years. In 2022, actively disengaged employees made up 18% of the workforce, up 5% from 2019. Even more notable, Gallup reports engagement among Gen Z and younger millennial employees dropped six percentage points during the same time period, citing a “significant change from pre-pandemic years.” Young employees who work remotely full or part time were less satisfied—those in strong agreement that someone encourages their development dropped 12 percentage points.

As a career coach, I take whatever chance I can to bust the myth that the exhilarating careers we dream about come from pursuing our passions. I wrote my book You Turn: Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, Design Your Dream Career around what I believe to be a simple but fundamental truth: the most fulfilling career anyone can have comes from leveraging their natural skillset.

To find meaning, don’t do what you love—do what you are.

Gallup estimates that quiet quitters make up at least 50% of the workforce. This is a symptom of a new and silent pandemic that’s been taking over our workforce, one that can no longer be ignored: disillusionment, disengagement and burn out.

It’s time to face it: the old workplace structures pre-pandemic are no longer working.

Quiet quitting sparked a contentious debate that can only be explained by Americans’ homogenous desire for a better relationship with their jobs. We won’t get there by coining new terms with the word “quiet”— we’ll get there by saying the words that are silent.

Here’s the truth: our youngest generation is released into the workforce with many companies that provide minimal outreach, training and onboarding. It’s not until feeling unseen and overlooked that young employees learn the importance of individuality—and start to prioritize it.

Let’s stop being quiet, and start talking… For everyone’s sake.

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