A quiet retreat indicates that some managers are always expected to be overworked

• Silence has become the latest job market and Tik Tok buzz-phrase.
• Managers are sounding the alarm that employees are just doing their jobs and nothing more.
• But the rise of the phrase reflects more about the expectations of managers than employees.

Liz Gross rolled her eyes the first time she heard the phrase “quiet break.”

“Silence seems like doing your job, but as a society and an economy, I can see what’s gotten us to the point where we’re talking,” Gross, founder and CEO of CampusSonar, a higher education consulting firm, told Insider.

The phrase first picked up steam on Tik Tok, the workers’ new digital city square. Basically, quitting is about doing your job as written – and otherwise maintaining strict boundaries. That means no overtime and prioritizing minimum requirements. For many workers, it’s a way to make a job sustainable in the long run.

While it seems like a pretty straightforward concept, the silent stop has been repeated all over the internet. Managers ask whether they can punish or fire quiet people on their teams. Quiet people who call themselves this “may not have a job for a long time.” They say quiet people can be the first ax when laid off.

“When you describe it as quitting, I think it’s very clear to people how stupid that is,” freelance writer Jason Horne, 39, told Insider.

But for Gross, as the phrase became more ubiquitous, another realization came: “The more I think about it, it’s a comment on managers and corporate cultures, not actual employees who need to be silenced.”

Quitting is not a new phenomenon, and it’s not even stopping. They are just employees doing their job as written. But the emergence of a time when people are rethinking work and how it fits into their lives has become a lightning rod for the job market going forward. The strike is not against the workers who are doing their jobs; It’s about managers having to adjust to employees who are no longer willing to extend themselves above and beyond.

Silence shows systematic ‘cultures of overwork’

For decades, employers have had the upper hand in setting wages and working standards. But when that changes a bit, employers seem to be playing defense, realizing they can’t ask for much outside of normal job requirements.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a catchphrase or a thing to say if we don’t have a widespread problem with corporate cultures of overwork, admiration, and distant or ineffective managers and leaders,” Gross said. .

Now, more than two years after the pandemic has overlapped with other crises such as war and climate change, workers are rethinking their jobs, especially as they face the same demands they made before the world’s changing events.

“There’s a lot of staff that went above and beyond, but especially during the pandemic, and didn’t get rewarded for that — and maybe lost something in the process,” Gross said. “So if there’s no incentive to go above and beyond, you shouldn’t expect people to go above and beyond.”

At the same time, “employees see this as a time to push back on some of the things their employers may see as unfair or perhaps burdensome,” Bradford Bell, a professor in the Department of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Insider. He’s referring to employers who have been desperate to hire for more than a year, with workers leaving their jobs for better causes.

According to Bell, the reduction in staffing speed is not necessarily a new practice. For decades, workers have been involved in everything from sit-ins to work-to-law — a union strategy where you stick to the rules of your job and do nothing else.

“It’s definitely an energy that feels powerful,” Horne says.

Employers are learning that they need to pay people for what they’re worth — and that includes work outside of their jobs

Workers have been successful in sending shockwaves through the labor market, either by striking out or unionizing or demanding more money. Employers are not used to this.

“Leaders and managers of all generations have had to seriously consider what is realistic and acceptable to ask of employees today,” Gross said.

Workers certainly expect to get paid more — the New York Federal Reserve’s annual wage survey shows that the minimum wage workers would receive for a new job is $72,873. They know they can find work elsewhere if they want, or are asked to do work beyond the scope of their duties. This comes from not maintaining productivity after decades of wages.

Kate, a corporate IT worker in her early 30s, told Insider, “Even if you have a very well-paying job, you get paid to do your job.” “If your employer wants you to do more than your job, they should give you a reason to do that, not an expectation.”

Kate has always been a high achiever. But she realizes that constantly going above and beyond doesn’t get you paid or promoted—instead, “you have to at least do this good thing all the time.”

She said she eventually participated in the Great Resignation and got double her salary and better conditions. She’s not alone: ​​More than 4 million people quit their jobs in June, a trend that has continued for more than a year.

For managers, this means that the pre-pandemic trend of expecting employees to do better than their stated goals and objectives—they don’t leave the office, or work overtime, or pile in at work—can’t be repeated.

“If you’re in a situation where people are exceeding expectations and you’re not doing anything for them, they definitely need to reset the bar because you haven’t done anything to raise them,” Gross said.