The debate around the quiet quitting (“silent resignation”), doing the bare minimum at work, has reignited the debate around the place our jobs have in our lives. In particular on the fact that it has become normal to expect workers to always do more, notes the site of the BBC.
“There have always been people looking to look good in order to get a promotion,” explains Anthony Klotz, organizational psychologist and associate professor in the management faculty of University College London. But the latter were the exception a hundred years ago. Studies have shown that in frontier Chicago power plants in the 1920s and 1930s, workers who worked faster than others were dubbed them “rhythm breakers” and even received blows from their colleagues for this zeal.
The situation has changed completely, even though the BBC agrees that it is difficult to pinpoint a specific date. Currently, employees are expected “that they are involved, enthusiastic, motivated. To get noticed or get a promotion, they had better be zealous, and overtime,” explains Katie Bailey, professor at King’s College London. Those who do not meet these criteria fear either being denied promotions or being categorized as slackers.
More and more complex jobs
The first avenue to explore to understand this turnaround according to the English site is the drop in the number of union members. In the United Kingdom, workers’ organizations had 12.2 million members. In 2020, this figure has been halved to around 6.6 million. A decrease that has eroded the bargaining power of employees.
The nature of jobs has also changed, with jobs becoming more and more complex and also becoming more difficult to define. “As positions became increasingly unclear, employers came to expect their employees to fill in the gaps,” elaborates Anthony Klotz. Employees internalize this expectation over time, as they see their colleagues rewarded or promoted for completing additional tasks.
The third factor is the growing importance attached to the involvement employees with the aim of creating a corporate culture that makes people want to go to their workplace. While this strategy may seem commendable at first glance, it is very often accompanied by overtime or the addition of tasks not listed on the job description, comments Katie Bailey.
The combination of these factors is such that overzealousness at work has gone from being the exception to the norm, and this pressure is felt more by some workers than by others. This is particularly the case for people in positions of responsibility where high salaries are considered to justify little or no free time.
Finally, women are more likely to overdo it. According to a 2017 US study, women are more likely than their male colleagues to volunteer (often reluctantly) to take on extra tasks at work, because society expects them to be happier to commit. in “Community Tasks” that is to say activities aimed at helping the group, defines Anthony Klotz.
However, with the onset of the pandemic, the BBC wonders if these behaviors are not being questioned, mainly by the younger generation.
To address my questions upstream and to be informed of Forum Expat news, I register here.