I’ve been fascinated by the Quiet Quitting discussion stemming from the viral TikTok video by @zaidlepplin, who says in the comments,
This works best if you can tolerate your job – if you’re miserable, get outta there! Your peace of mind comes first.
@zaid k, TikTok Creator
People have said this label of #QuietQuitting is wrong or plain nonsense. I don’t want to debate the term’s merits but rather dig into why it’s resonating with so many and what that could mean to the mental health at work discussion.
This topic resonates for me personally and as a leader of others at work:
- On a personal level, how do I know if I am too miserable to tolerate my job and risk speaking up or quitting?
- As a leader of others, how do I manage projects if people only tolerate their jobs when success relies on the team’s engagement and willingness to give above and beyond?
Personally:
Being miserable at work is a struggle I’ve faced many times. My parents are immigrants to Canada with a work ethic I’ve never matched. My great-great-grandparents were indentured workers who immigrated to Guyana to work on plantations after slaves were freed in the 1800s. Working hard to get ahead and staying for job security are values deeply ingrained in me. But integrity also matters, and so does inner peace. Over my career, I’ve become mindful of when I lose my balance. Guided by the wisdom of my inner voice or teachers who have shown up to help me, I found a better way of working when challenges came up. I’ve also had the experience of a toxic workplace that broke my mental health because I stayed too long and ignored risk factors.
As a leader of others:
Project managers know the pain of hustling people to get tasks done when they either don’t commit or, worse, they commit and do not deliver. When I push for commitments to be honoured, I hear things like there are too many meetings to get work done, too many emails to respond to, and too much work assigned to one person. I have worked with people who have checked out and seem just not to care. As much as I struggle to get people to do their jobs, neither do I want to be part of the problem that risks their mental health at work.
The perspective of integrity:
#QuietQuitting points to a real problem that’s been around for a long time, but there seems to be so many different opinions on what that problem is. Thinking about it from the integrity perspective can help bring compassion and understanding and hopefully move the needle forward.
In her book, The Way of Integrity, Martha Beck describes integrity as being whole or intact, like a plane with the structural integrity to fly. If an aircraft has a missing or non-functioning component, it is out of integrity and could crash.
An organization won’t have integrity if employees stop working in a quiet and undisclosed way. But neither will an employee have the integrity of their health if they are burning out or feel mistreated. We want the organization to be healthy and the employee to be healthy.
The enormous response to #QuietQuitting feels like that warning light you see in the cockpit before an airplane starts falling out of the sky in a movie or TV show.
- But, what is the warning light saying to pay attention to and fix?
- What’s the urgency?
- Who needs to pay attention — is it the employer or the employee?
Employee questions:
If the employee chooses to go down the path of quiet quitting, will they be putting themselves in harm’s way to stay? Will quiet quitting damage an employee’s reputation? Is there some underlying belief system that has to change in the employee’s mindset, as I wrote about in this article? Is quiet quitting happening because the employer has a sinister agenda like ‘quiet firing‘?
These are just some factors that come to mind. Are there others?
Employer questions:
Similarly, the employer needs to ask questions about their organization – is there toxicity in the workplace practices, unreasonable demands on the employee, or a toxic leader causing people to give up hope and bide their time for a termination package? Is there a disengaged employee who wants to be heard, and is there a caring leader who will listen with genuine empathy?
What else is there for employers to consider from an integrity perspective?
Take time to pause and be mindful:
#QuietQuitting is not the problem to fix; it’s a warning signal pointing to a problem of something being out of place or broken in the workplace. Taking the time to pause and understand the underlying cause will enable the best response. Perhaps quiet quitting is the best response, or changing the workplace is the better option. Or maybe it is to overtly quit because it’s unsafe or too miserable to stay.
The connection to mental health:
As I follow the online discussion about this topic, my mind goes to protecting mental health because I know how easy it is to ignore warning signs and be the one who is harmed. Likely only a subset of what is called #QuietQuitting is about toxic work and mental health – but staying in that job could be a dangerous option for that subset.
As a friend told me, “Sunita, you can’t not breathe the air.”
An essential resource that helped me talk about my needs when I was in a toxic workplace situation was the 13 psychosocial factors for mental health in the workplace. These are world-class standards with the support of researchers and workplaces that care about guarding people’s minds while on the job.
If quiet quitting is a warning signal flashing away, this list of 13 factors could be the manual you pull out to diagnose the problem.
In addition, Ontario has many resources listed in mental health support and workplace mental health. If you are facing the question posed by the TikTok video creator in their comment about if you can tolerate the workplace, I hope these 13 factors can help you make the right decision before harm happens. In my opinion, psychosocial factors for mental health should be part of every employee manual. Mental health and safety must be taken as seriously as physical safety.
Have you had to make a decision for your well-being at work? Do you feel your health is at risk while working? What guided you to tolerate things, change things or leave, so you have peace of mind?