What Is Quiet Quitting

Quiet quitting.

You likely heard this term if you spent more than 30 minutes online this summer. It started as a whisper on social media, then became headline material toward the end of the summer. It seemed to become the rallying cry for some in the workforce.

So what are people quitting, and why are they doing it quietly?

What is quiet quitting?

Quiet quitting refers to an employee who is there to collect a paycheck and isn’t emotionally or intellectually engaged. But why has it become so popular lately? Well, it’s really about burnout. Employees are saying “No more!” to excessive overtime hours, working weekends and evenings, and even work-related stress and anxiety. Those living by this mantra are fine doing the job they were hired for, but they’re done living for work 24/7.

While the pandemic is undoubtedly a cause of the uptick in quiet quitting, it’s not necessarily the only cause. Pressures to conform to “business norms” and frustrations from a lack of