“Quiet quitting” and now “loud quitting”. The new buzzword!

Towards the end of 2022, when I was gathering data for my end of quarter snapshot, I was fascinated to learn of a general sense of discontent. The consensus was much higher levels of ER issues across the surveyed population’s businesses.

It seems that the challenging circumstances that we all face in life right now is spilling over to workforce issues. It is causing HR teams to have increases in their ER workload. Many HR leaders talked of “quiet quitting” as being a potential issue. Now as we move into 2023, the new buzzword on the block is “loud quitting”.

The term “quiet quitting”, popularized by Gen-Zers and younger millennials, describes employees who only do the bare minimum. They do not go above and beyond their job description.

“Loud quitting” is arguably a bolder, riskier tactic. As the name suggests, it involves employees loudly talking about their desire to leave and find work elsewhere, in the hope their boss will offer a promotion or an increase in pay.

As I have said before, 2023 for HR professionals is not going to be for the fainthearted. The year ahead may be uncertain, but most agree the market is Talent driven. “Quiet” and “loud quitting” is going to be potentially harder to tackle with the prevalence of remote and hybrid working. The cost-of-living crisis, widespread industrial unrest and the War in Ukraine have fuelled anxiety and discontent. Moreover, concerns around mental health were rising, but also more issues around performance and more grievances than usual.

Is this compounded by home working? The pandemic? It leads to lots of other questions that HR leaders are grappling with going into 2023.

If you are able and willing to add your insight the quarterly panel, the calls usually take circa 30 minutes and I am always grateful if new HR leaders contact us for input. If you would like to talk to us about partnering with you to hire to your HR recruitment needs, I would welcome hearing from you. Please reach out to me at andy@andrewjamesrecruitment.co.uk