Last week in part one of the It’s so Quiet series, we talked about Quiet Promotion. This week let’s look at the Quiet Quitting trend, particularly focusing on how it may impact your income. Can you afford to quiet quit? Can you afford not to?
What Is It?
Quiet Quitting is meeting the minimum expectations of your job requirements and feeling psychologically detached from your work. If you avoid leading a team of your coworkers or you refuse to work overtime, you may be a Quiet Quitter.
What Can You Do?
Job descriptions are living documents. They expand and contract with both the company’s needs and the employee’s abilities. Level setting expectations on a regular basis is vital to shaping both your work and your engagement. Here are three things you can do:
Document: Make a list of duties you were asked to do that are outside of your job description. Are they housekeeping tasks? For example, taking notes in every team meeting, typing them up, and distributing them. Or, are they responsibilities that will make you visible to leadership? For example, presenting your department’s Q4 statistics in the partner meeting. If they are housekeeping, then no wonder you’re discouraged. But if they are responsibilities that put you in front of the people who can further your career, then rethink what may be going on behind the scenes.
Communicate: Whatever your documentation reveals, it’s time for a 1:1 with your manager. Present your list. Politely state you’ve noticed an uptick in duties. Ask if these assignments are intentional. If so, and they are housekeeping, is it because of your status in the company? (E.g., You are a junior member of the team.) If the assignments are more high-profile, are you being set up for promotion?
Strategize: After documenting and discussing, think about where you want to go from here. If the assignments you received position you to advance, then the extra work benefits you in the long run. However, the rise and grind culture leads to burnout. If you are expected to go above and beyond your job description with no end and no reward in sight, then do you really want to stay at your organization? Particularly if you work in Big Tech. Seventy-nine percent of the workers laid off last year had another job within three months. Things to consider when making your decision:
- Do you have an emergency fund with $1200 in it?
- Do you also have six months worth of expenses saved?
- How will the coming recession impact your portfolio, mortgage, and/or loans?
- Do you have a side gig that you can ramp up to second-job status?
- Do you have an alternative for healthcare coverage? (E.g., through your spouse’s employer)
- Does your current employer offer benefits (e.g., working remote and/or flexibility) that compensate for the extra duties?
You could also keep quietly quitting, but that can lead to Quiet Firing; more on that next week.
Have you ever quietly quit a job? Please share in the comments.