From one article about coasting culture, through a trend on TikTok, to a fear among employers all over the world. The so-called quiet quitting was discussed by many people and became a trendy topic to write about. Also among Polish journalists and HR experts. And that’s where it went too far and is a misunderstanding of Polish and American job culture.
Aki Ito the originator of this term (it was created based on her article linked above), refers strictly to the US job culture and how it changes over time. Everyone knows the term ‘to hustle’. Something that many people in the startup world boast of which is basically having work-centric life but not because you have to but because you want to. There’s a goal behind working hard and long hours and it probably makes sense when you’re building your own business or are trying to build a career – fast. Hustling is not everything, American workers in general work more than other western cultures. I recommend checking the videos of ‘what surprised me the most as a US expat’ where many people compare work in the US and some European countries.
So, what happened with this whole quitting thing? Pandemic happened. Remote-first happened. An option to work from your home for an employer literally anywhere in the world happened. Also, people got closer to their families and had more time (no commuting) for hobbies and side projects. And in the end, it turned out that work is not everything.
Looking at the above, we can say that ‘quiet quitting’ does happen in the US. But if we will take into consideration that most people were working more than what’s necessary to get the work done, we don’t have a trend of people underperforming, they’re performing quite ok just not killing themselves anymore for some job. And for US employers it can be a significant change.
In Poland, let’s be honest, hustling was just something popular among Gary V fans and, more often than not used as a joke (especially in recent years). I don’t mean that there are no people in Poland who work more than expected and have a strong focus on their career or business. Similarly to other European nations, our labour laws are very pro-employee. We are encouraged to take holidays, sick leave etc. If someone is actually overperforming, they are – overperformers, not standard employees. And that’s OK. This is our work culture, and Polish companies are used to working in it. Similarly to other places in Poland, the pandemic influenced how people spend their time and how they look at their work opportunities. But I don’t think it caused a general decrease in how much we work. We work differently than before, but just like in 2019, we still have people who are overachievers and people who treat work as a way of getting money to cover their living expenses and maybe (hopefully) their hobbies.
Additionally, Gen Z is being marked as a ‘quiet quitting natives’ and put on banners for this movement. Well, yeah, it makes sense as they start their careers now, so how can we expect them to work differently? Let’s assume that Gen Z employees, as default, don’t treat work as a means of self-fulfilment. What’s wrong with that? They have completely different opportunities ahead of them, and if the new standard will look like this, it’s better for well-being of all working people.
“But the productivity will go down, and the innovation will slow down and in general, businesses will make less money and…” I doubt that. Short term, businesses will have to learn and adapt, long term, they will be fine (as always).
There’s one more thing I wanted to cover. When I first read about quiet quitting, I thought, “I’ve done that multiple times in the past when I felt I hit a ceiling and didn’t see an option to develop or simply felt abused by the employer”. The other face or maybe definition of quiet quitting is people doing only as much as the job requires as they don’t feel any incentive to go beyond that. This leads to either underperforming and being fired or changing work by the particular employee. Something that’s completely normal and (I guess) present from the beginning of work as we know it. And this is a much bigger issue for employers than some social media trend. If people work ‘only’’ as much as the job requires because they want to have time for other things – but are still delivering – that’s OK. But when people ‘do only what’s expected’ because they’re fed up with their workplace – that’s very not ok as it never ends well. The worst thing is that it usually affects the most talented and best-performing people. They ‘do more’ but they also ‘expect more’ and if their expectations regarding development, growth, and work culture are not met, they look for alternatives.
If anyone’s interested, I can develop the last part of the post separately, as this problem can be developed much further. Plus I’m very interested in your view on the above. Do we have a problem with quiet quitting in Poland (Europe)? Or maybe people confuse the issue of employees losing incentive to work for a particular company with a trend present in the US? Let me know in the comments.
