Is ‘soft quitting’ to be taken seriously? Or is it just another hash-taggable work trend?

Soft quitting is defined as choosing to disengage emotionally from your work without necessarily reducing your output. It’s the quality of your work that suffers as you lose your enthusiasm for it.

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It is no coincidence that both quiet and soft quitting took off as a trend, post-covid.

There are huge links, in my opinion, to workplace behaviours and a human reaction to the quick return to the hustle-bustle way of life after the trauma of a global health pandemic on one hand, but on the other hand, the opportunity for a calmer way of life during it.

Quiet quitting is when employees continue to do the bare minimum, enough to keep their jobs but don’t go the extra mile. Quiet quitting was a work trend that caught the imagination immediately after covid.

Soft quitting (a more recent trend), on the other hand, is defined as choosing to disengage emotionally from your work without necessarily reducing your output. It’s the quality of your work that suffers as you lose your enthusiasm for it.

Behaviours like the workplace buzz-terms or trends, soft quitting and quiet quitting, of course always existed and some people do get very excited in arguing these behaviours are nothing new. I do agree these behaviours have always existed.

However, they are not to be dismissed and what is valuable, in my opinion, is that these workplace buzz terms, which are hash-taggable and usually grow out of social media platforms like TikTok — is that they identify, address and spark a debate and conversation of understanding a human behaviour that impacts upon a workplace and the people in the workplace.

It may have always been there, but now the new hysteria around the buzz term gives us an opportunity to explore it easily. It makes the analysis and debate around these behaviours more accessible.

It would be very difficult and complex to explain the behaviours of a “soft quitter” if we did not have the term “soft quitting”.

The analogy to compare to the Chinese practice of Tang-Ping, or “lying flat”, is interesting. Dr Diane Hamilton made this comparison in a recent Forbes article dealing with the rise of soft quitting. Tang-Ping is when someone withdraws from the rat race way of life in favour of a more minimalist lifestyle.

Great disengagement

Management consultancy firm Gallup has also coined the rise in disengagement in the workplace as the “great disengagement”. Quiet quitters can be managed back to higher productivity. Soft quitters, however, have to be persuaded and cajoled, Dr Hamilton said.

The output of a quiet quitter can be increased by giving them more work to do. The soft quitter has to be convinced what they are doing is worth doing.

So, soft quitting is deeper, harder to identify and definitely more difficult to prevent and resolve.

Soft quitting is very much about emotional health, mental health and psychological health.

It is a more whole experience for the individual as there is much greater chance it is about or has come about because of more than just work. It is connected to someone’s whole life experiences, their personal and family life, or their experiences in society.

Damien McCarthy: 'Soft quitting is a much deeper problem of losing interest, connection, motivation and engagement in your work life and that sounds like a much harder and more difficult state for anyone to be in from a health point of view. It is harder to identify, slower to address and takes longer to remedy.'
Damien McCarthy: ‘Soft quitting is a much deeper problem of losing interest, connection, motivation and engagement in your work life and that sounds like a much harder and more difficult state for anyone to be in from a health point of view. It is harder to identify, slower to address and takes longer to remedy.’

Quiet quitting was more simplistic and easier to identify and resolve. If you like, it was just someone who has a problem at or with work.

There is also a high chance Gen Z will be blamed for the rise in “soft quitting”, as these terms get driven by social media. This can be unfair, as soft quitting always existed in some form and Gen Z are not the ones who started it. They might be ones posting about it, but they did not start it.

Worryingly, social media can be dangerous in creating a hysteria surrounding something like soft-quitting. This can be a very thin line to cross between a worthwhile conversation on soft-quitting or promoting the idea of it in resentment or sheer laziness.

I believe a return to a more old-fashioned communication is key in workplaces.

Threat of remote working

There is various research which points to workplace loneliness and increased detachment and disengagement in a more remote and hybrid world of work.

We must admit this is a threat, and although the majority will protect against this conversation, it is more beneficial for us as workers in our jobs and careers to understand this because if remote and hybrid working is to be truly and genuinely successful in the long-term, it needs to shake off its insecurities first and allow for improvement to evolve.

What we forget is that, in general, we have actually only begun our journey in the world of a more disconnected, online, remote world of work and I think it will be interesting to find out the breakdown through research into where the soft quitters are and how has that behaviour come about. Is the lack of the old-fashioned face-to-face connection taking its toll?

Therefore, I think soft quitting sparks a deeper debate of understanding in how we can help people in our workplaces and identify where it is going wrong.

If you were to ask me, would I prefer to deal with a quiet quitter or a soft quitter? I would choose quiet quitting all day long as quiet quitting can be described as a short-term action to something you disagree with or are angry about in the workplace. It is easier dealt with and easier to resolve. For example, if you raise the workload, you raise the bare minimum.

Soft quitting is a much deeper problem of losing interest, connection, motivation and engagement in your work life and that sounds like a much harder and more difficult state for anyone to be in from a health point of view. It is harder to identify, slower to address and takes longer to remedy.

The question is — as a new workplace buzz term takes off, in what direction will this go? Will the impact of the term #softquitting be #lit (good) or will it be #ick (bad)?

In my mind, there are three results:

  • It does not take off like quiet quitting did and hopefully we need not worry about it too much;
  • It takes off and its disrespectful promotion on social media platforms creates negative results for people and workplaces;
  • It is discussed and analysed with respect, everybody is allowed an opinion and people and workplaces address what is a real issue with attempting to recognise it and remedy it.

My hope is for the third option.

  • Damien McCarthy is an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the managing director of HR consultancy firm HR Buddy

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