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A growing number of younger workers say they are prioritising their mental wellbeing over their work by putting minimum effort into their jobs.
The trend, called “Quiet Quitting”, is when workers do enough to get by, but do not put in the extra effort which can be expected in many workplaces.
A 22-year-old healthcare administration worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said there was a lot of pressure from employers to go above and beyond, but she could see no payoff for doing so.
“For example, if you get your work done fast, the expectation is to keep grinding until you have completed your hours,” she said. “I had to learn to take longer to do my tasks, to become less efficient at what I do.”
She counted herself as one of many Generation Z employees who wanted a clear line between work and her life.
“I show up for my job, I do the work, but as soon as I leave it is out of sight, out of mind. It is not slacking off – it is just not going above and beyond.”
Angela Lim, founder of digital employee health platform Clearhead, said quiet quitting was a symptom of employers not understanding the needs of their younger workers.
“This is a generational shift we are seeing that younger workers are not wanting to sell their soul to their employers,” Lim said.
She pointed to a Harvard Business Review study which found 68% of millennials and 81% of Generation Z workers left their jobs for mental health reasons during the pandemic, to show how younger workers were putting their mental health as a priority.
It was vital employers better utilised the younger members of their team, she said.
“From our data we don’t see this reversing, it is an embedded generational shift. It is on the employer to try and get these workers to see work beyond a 9-5 and a paycheque.
“Part of this was making sure workplaces had support infrastructure in place to allow employees mental health assistance, that went beyond just “a number to call, she said.
While one in four Kiwis were at risk of mental health struggles, in most workplaces only 3% of workers used employee assistance programmes for counselling or support.
This was a major issue, and if employers wanted to utilise younger staff, they needed to fix it, she said.
Lauren Berry, people and culture manager at Employment Hero, said quiet quitting was a more subtle element of the Great Resignation.
Employers should not see this as workers being lazy, but a readjustment of workplace expectations, she said.
Workers were putting boundaries in place to prevent burnout, and managers should respect this and trust their staff, she said.
Infometrics principal economist Brad Olsen said what some people called quiet quitting, was just doing your job.
“I think the phrase is offensive to younger workers. The idea that you are supposed to do extra work for no extra pay,” Olsen said.
If a business required staff to work beyond their role, that business faced the deeper problem of being under-resourced, he said.
If employers tried to force younger workers to work beyond their job description, it could cause long-term suffering in the economy, he said.
With the stress of the pandemic and historically high inflation, people were already doing it tough, and to push them to work harder would run the risk of burning the economy out, he said.
“The idea that a good worker consistently goes above and beyond their job description for no extra pay sounds more to me like exploitation than hard yakka,” he said.
Ren Ecosystem