Episode 80: Don’t Quiet Quit, Deliberately Decide
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Videos on Tiktok are generating millions of views on Quiet Quitting. But this is not a new concept. This week I discuss:
What #QuietQuitting is
The other instances in which #quietquitting has effectively been used to change a culture
My concern with the concept of #QuietQuitting and why Deliberately Deciding and Defining your career wellbeing is a more effective and desirable strategy
Quiet quitting isn’t about leaving your company or avoiding work. Instead, it is about setting firm boundaries to pursue a meaningful life outside of work and working hard to regain or retain healthy work-life integration, all while staying at their current jobs.
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Read the Transcript
Hey friends,
I am really glad you are here I appreciate you all.
I'm guessing over the last few weeks, you’ve heard about the trend of quiet quitting.
It’s all over TikTok. Most major news organizations –fortune, WSJ, USA Today, and Huffpo, have written about it.
While I have seen many employees, influencers, and pundits talk about it, I have yet to see a CEO or Head of HR talk about it. If you have, send it to me at hello@jillgriffinconsulting.com I’d love to read it.
Videos about the phrase “quiet quitting” are generating millions of views on TikTok as young professionals reject the idea of going above and beyond in their careers, using the hashtag to emote.
Quiet quitting isn’t about leaving your company or avoiding work. Instead, it is about setting firm boundaries to pursue a meaningful life outside of work and working hard to regain or retain healthy work-life integration, all while staying at their current jobs.
There’s a hardy sometimes healthy debate about if this is good for you or your career,
there’s also been talk about how Millenials are just lazy, that if work is so tough, then just outright quit.
Well, that’s really a privilege as not everyone can just walk away from a job. In my personal experience as a TBI, I would have LOVED to have found a pause so I could recover, but I needed my employer-sponsored health insurance to help me get well.
With everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that is going on in the world, are you surprised? I mean, I am not.
I’ve all come to expect this after the great resignation - I still think of it as the great reassessment - people are struggling, hurting, stressed, and burned out. Their well-being is at stake
They are trying to find a way to balance their personal needs (money, intellectual stimulation, and purpose) with an undeniable, hustle culture vibe we’ve been under for YEARS. And because we’re only now talking about well-being at work, it explosion of quitting is happening.
So, let’s first define it. Quite Quitting means that you are doing the baseline of work in your job so that you do just enough not to get fired.
It’s not a new concept.
Essentially it’s a pause or a pullback on work. You’re not actually leaving or quitting - yet -
you are looking at the exchange of what you are getting, money, benefits, experience, in change for what you are giving - your labor.
While energy is different, as I said, this is not a new topic.
Unions have called it to work to rule -a form of protest in which employees do exactly what is stated in their contracts, and nothing more, in order to slow down production a crucial tactic while negotiating labor contracts
Forty years ago, the women of Iceland went on strike - they refused to work, cook and look after children for a day.
It was a moment that changed the way women were seen in the country and helped put Iceland at the forefront of the fight for equality.
90% of women in the country decided to demonstrate their importance by going on strike.
"It completely paralyzed the country and opened the eyes of many men."
Banks, factories, and some shops had to close, as did schools and nurseries - leaving many fathers with no choice but to take their children to work. It was a major step forward in gender equality and equal pay for the women of Iceland.
The sober community has called it a sober job (again, the energy is different but it’s about not taxing yourself. The priority is on your sobriety and keeping the stress and anxiety down so you can do the job AND focus on your #1 priority of recovery.
Consultants and service-based businesses have called it “out of scope”.
“out of scope” means anything outside an initiative's parameters.
While many things are out of scope, here I mean additional tasks or changes to the requirements without a reduction of other items or increased fees for the services.
Only a few times in my agency career did I ever see this enacted - and once was by myself. Basically, because of fear the client would put the account in review and the agency would lose the business.
However, an account that is staff too lean to keep profit high and the cost down for the client just crushes the creativity and morale of your workforce. And this is what’s happening now. Due to the great reassessment, many places are still short-staffed and needed or expected the remaining staff to pick up the slack. Without a raise, time off, or any cash and prizes.
As Claudia Alick (@claudiaalicklove) on TikTok states “It’s not quiet quitting. It’s resisting wage theft. Every couple of years, people will try to repackage a good idea in a way that obfuscates it and makes it harder to actually get to. You’re not quiet quitting, you’re just resisting being stolen from.”
So here’s the thing. I’ve been in positions where I basically traded my labor for appreciation, and it certainly wasn't reciprocated. There wasn't a pause, a comp day, or balance. There was just more.
As a consultant, I made the mistake of bartering for services–and overdelivering. We had a clear scope, but then COVID shut down my client's business.
I didn't know what to do, we were in, as they say, unprecedented times.
So, I continued to service the business and wracking and tracking hours for my barter exchange. Except my client came to 1) expect the over-delivery and became abusive and 2) they had no way of meeting their obligations because they were now closing the business.
They had the money to pay me, but we didn't have a backup agreement in our scope. So, after 9 months of serving them, I consciously chose to give them 2 weeks' notice. Because of my professionalism and responsibility, I chose how I wanted to end it. With grace and excellence.
I work with people constantly trying to find the right balance, the exchange, how to choose their purpose, add value, be intellectually stimulated, and be paid a fair wage.
And that’s where the solution for quiet quitting starts for me.
When we are clear in our career identity (the strengths, skills, values, and beliefs) we choose our purpose that connects with our identity and then get super, I mean super clear on our non-negotiables we come to the discussion or the negotiation with a shift. We are now empowered.
My concern with quite quitting is the same as when someone says, I gotta get out of this job. My boss, my workplace is toxic. It is like something is happening to you and you have to run from it.
Consciously choose what you want to do, and what you want to contribute.
If you leave and don't clean it up - your small or large T trauma, your thoughts, your choices, you are going to recreate a situation that may not be exactly the same but will have similar consequences.
And the quitting - I don't want you to quite quit. I want you to consciously choose. To
Purposely Pick or Deliberately Define. I don't want to quit something. I don't want my energy there. I want to choose something. What you focus on increases.
What are you choosing for your career?
Let me know. I'll put my details in the show notes.
And if you want help to create your career identity and choose your non-negotiables, schedule an appointment with me. I’d love to help you create what’s possible.
Ok, my friend, I appreciate you so much. See you next time.