What is 'Quiet Quitting'?

Lately, new terms keep appearing, and it's hard to keep up with them.
The one that caught my eye this time is 'quiet quitting'.

For a long time, there have been people who would suddenly quit without any warning, like someone who 'just disappears' or 'you realize they've quit before you know it'.

I thought this was what it meant, but apparently, that is called 'silent quitting'.
In that case, the person had been harboring worries, dissatisfaction, or stress, but couldn't talk to anyone about it, and then suddenly quit as if a thread had snapped.

So, what kind of resignation is 'quiet quitting'?

Actually, this 'quiet quitting' doesn't mean they are quitting; they continue to work.
However, it is a way of working where they refrain from excessive involvement in their job and only handle the bare minimum of tasks.
It is a metaphorical expression that compares the state of mentally distancing oneself from work to 'quitting'.

There have always been a certain number of people like this.
They don't work overtime.
They leave on time.
They don't want to be managers, so they don't aim for promotions.
They don't speak up in meetings.
Naturally, they don't participate in after-work drinking parties.
They only handle their assigned essential tasks and never take on work or responsibilities beyond their role.
They take their annual paid leave without fail.

While it is out of the question to not even be able to do the work assigned to you, these people do their jobs properly.

The mainstream way of working until now has been to be loyal to the company, work single-mindedly and recklessly, putting family aside, from early morning until late at night, until reaching retirement age.
This supported the period of high economic growth.

However, ideas and values regarding how to work have gradually changed, and more people have come to want to enrich both their work and private lives.
And because their compensation is not commensurate with their workload, they have started to adopt the mindset of not sacrificing their lives for the company.

This likely stems from watching their seniors after joining the company and thinking, 'I don't want to end up like that'.

The destination for those harboring the dissatisfaction I touched upon in my previous article, 'Looking at Job Satisfaction Surveys', was 'quiet quitting'.

Since they are doing their jobs properly, they feel they have no reason to be complained about, and in fact, few people do complain.
Therefore, their stress is reduced, and because they can secure private time, they can make time for themselves or take care of their families, leading to mental stability.

However, these are short-term, immediate benefits.
In the long run, it is nothing more than abandoning opportunities for personal growth and turning a blind eye to career advancement and the associated increase in income.

For the company, first of all, team motivation does not rise.
New projects and initiatives will likely not progress.
Even if the current workload is sufficient for the current members, it is clear that things will dwindle in the future.
It will even become difficult for the company to sustain itself because there will be no one to take on management roles.

Until now, frankly speaking, an individual's private time was not recognized.
It was seen as being lazy.
However, from now on, by actively recognizing and promoting the importance of valuing each individual's time for themselves, a path will open up where both the company and the individual can grow.

Company leaders must continue to talk about a vision that allows employees to have dreams for the future within the company.

I have also written about this in my previous article, 'The President's Job'.

If employees do not feel that they are growing together toward that dream, they will head toward 'quiet quitting'.
Once this happens, I think it is extremely difficult to reverse.
To prevent this, both sides must continue to communicate without fail so that they can reach a mutual understanding in order to provide fair evaluation and fair compensation.

I have also discussed this in my previous article, 'Customer Satisfaction and Employee Satisfaction', so please take a look at that as well if you like.

Thank you for reading.
I would be happy if you could like and follow. I look forward to your continued support.

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