The Great Resignation. Quiet Quitting. What The F***?

What is the great resignation?

Some call it the Big Quit, others refer to it as the Great Reshuffle, but you’ve probably seen the trend dubbed the Great Resignation by the majority of folks talking about it.

So, what is this all about? It’s all pretty simple: around early 2021, tons of workers started resigning from their jobs en masse. And it’s still happening on practically every continent.

Despite having “resignation” in the most popular name of the trend, don’t assume that people are simply walking away from work altogether—quite the opposite, actually. People are resigning from their jobs to find better ones, even those who had been in their positions for years.

So, what’s driving all this? As with most labor and work trends over the last few years, the main catalyst seems to be the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent fallout. The pandemic shined a bright light on a lot of the pervasive problems in the workforce, while also forcing organizations to come up with new ways of getting work done—remotely and otherwise. And, of course, it also brought out the worst in a lot of companies. Put that all together, and you have a situation rife for a gigantic shake-up.

Guess what? People aren’t putting up with bullshit anymore; there’s more leverage than ever in some respects. They’re gonna go find someplace better to work, and there’s really nothing their (now-former) companies can do about it.

This is an exciting time.

What is quiet quitting?

This new work environment we now find ourselves in has also given birth to another phenomenon that is entirely understandable in some respects: quiet quitting.

Quiet quitting is when you’re still showing up for work but doing the absolute bare minimum to get by. This trend has resulted in workers pushing the limits for just how little they can do on the job without getting reprimanded or fired for it. In many cases, it’s easy to assume that many people doing this don’t give a damn if they get in trouble and are simply seeing how long they can get away with it.

Again, this is not the result of people just suddenly deciding to be bad. Quiet quitting is often a direct consequence of shitty workplaces that don’t value the time or mental health of their employees. Yes, a viral TikTok may have given the trend a spotlight earlier this year, but it’s all just a culmination of many organizations outright exploiting their workers for decades.

But the pandemic, its fallout, and an increasing labor shortage blew it all up.

What's new?

I remember quiet quitting; I did it myself for quit some time before finally quitting for real to start Corporate Rebels. Afterward, we learned that it's nothing special to feel like that in a job. With the vast majority of people being disengaged (or even “actively disengaged”) on the job, work isn't working for most people. And it hasn't been for decades.

So while these terms are very much hyped up these days, the problem isn't new. Not at all.

As mentioned earlier, one of the reasons why it's more popular to quit (quietly or loudly) is the fact that it's an employee's market these days. Unemployment rates are at extreme lows while staff shortages abound. Employees have much more to choose from and retain more bargaining power than they had some time ago.

And that's a great thing. Employers have to change to become more attractive to employees.

Time to let go of the:

• bullshit jobs
• outdated hierarchy
• excessive bureaucracy
• purpose washing

It's time to become a place where employees find passion, meaning, and motivation while being respected on all levels. Even though that “time” obviously arrived long ago, hopefully, the issues caused by these two movements have ramped up the pressure on organizations to actually care about their workers and their overall well-being.

The tides have indeed turned (even if just a bit), and we’re excited to see how it all plays out.