The ‘Quiet’ Work Trends Speak Volumes to the State of Workplace

With each passing year, the workplace goes through trends. We’ve experienced girl bosses, hustlers, and solopreneurs — but 2022 is the year of the quiet quitters.

In this phenomenon, individuals choose to do the bare minimum, but they keep their jobs — at least until they find a new one or their current employer interferes. But, the key to quiet quitting is keeping your mouth shut. You come to work, do what’s absolutely required, and get your paycheck.

Recent assessments of the trend would have you believing people are simply doing this due to burnout or stress, but there’s more to the story. In fact, assigning all responsibility to the employee understates the real issue at hand. The workplace is changing with the times, but employers aren’t adapting. So, people aren’t expecting change.

These terms might be new, but they’re a culmination of decades of problems, and the fact that workers are calling themselves quiet has got a lot of people talking.

Quietly Quitting

The concept of quiet quitting started getting traction — like most modern trends — on TikTok when users started adding the hashtag in early 2021. This was a time period perfect for changes in the workplace. First, the pandemic changed a large number of work environments, then the job market rebounded in 2021.