Quiet Quitting: A Noisy Wake-up Call to Employers

With rising awareness of quiet quitting, a negative connotation has been growing around it. Commonly described as employees not wanting to go above and beyond their job description, general understanding of the term suggests that quiet quitting is more about employees “not caring about their job” than  not addressing employee well-being. 

Through our VisualGPS research, we’ve learned that the majority of Mexican consumers feel anxious about the future. Amid war, recession, increased cost of living, and fear of a new pandemic, it's understandable why people’s outlook  leans toward the pessimistic. 

This “loud” context has certainly had an impact on what’s been described as “quiet” behavior. However, there’s nothing quiet about this new drive for people to reclaim their work-life balance; on the contrary, it feels like a very noisy wake-up call to employers. This quitting of the hustle and bustle of work culture proves once more the need to acknowledge the important role mental health plays in people’s daily lives— especially when it comes to their job. 

In Mexico, this conversation seems increasingly necessary. According to published research, service and blue-collar employees work 10 or more hours a day in the country. Mexican workers receive fewer vacation days a year (six) than any other country in Latin America, on par with countries like Brunei, Nigeria, China, Uganda, the Philippines, Malaysia or Thailand. Mexico is also part of the group of economies with less than nine annual vacation days, according to the World Policy Analysis Center.

From our VisualGPS research, we have learned that service and blue-collar workers in Mexico are particularly worried about having enough flexibility to take care of their families. And, unfortunately, despite having fewer resting days and probably high levels of burnout, it’s very likely they just can’t afford to “quietly quit.” 

Openly, Andrés Manual López Obrador, Mexico’s president, has acknowledged that the country is below average and that reforms to the current Ley Federal de Trabajo (Federal Labor Law) that guarantee a fair right to rest will come with time. However, regardless of the need to change public policy looking to improve this issue, employers must also acknowledge that their team members will perform better and increase their productivity if their stress and anxiety levels are at a point that eases their overall state of mind and allows them to maintain a balanced physical and mental health.

It is very important to note that while some quiet quitters are looking to detach their identities from their working life, this doesn’t mean that they want to completely disengage from their professional lives. According to our research, over 60 percent of people in Mexico strongly agree it is important to them to have a job/career that they are passionate about. This percentage only increases as generations get younger. More than 60 percent believe a successful life is one in which their physical, mental, and emotional needs are being met. And although job/career success is not the top priority for most, financial security is non-negotiable. Nearly 80 percent of consumers are not willing to give up their financial success for a balanced life, meaning only 27 percent actually are.

What sounds ideal is a world where individuals have a job that they are passionate about, are being rewarded fairly and their physical, mental and emotional needs are being cared for. Admittedly this might not be true for all, especially among blue-collar workers, who are particularly worried about having enough flexibility to take care of their families, but job and financial security and physical and mental health appear to be the determining factors for employers to address in order to undermine quiet quitting’s worst scenarios: full disengagement and employee burnout. 

The current demand to take employees' well-being more seriously represents an extra pressure to internal communications leads, HR departments and small-business owners. It’s crucial they start by fighting common misconceptions like the only way to succeed professionally is by pushing personal limits, or that a person’s value is measured by their productive output. Acknowledging that work shouldn’t have to be a fundamental part of your employee’s identity is a great starting point to recognize their demand for a better work-life balance. 

We have found that  to encourage healthy practices in the workplace, images and videos that reflect happy, relaxed employees, showing “life at work” as a daytime activity, and showing employees in physically safe environments are a good way for a business to show that they care about employee well-being. Also, represent staff taking breaks, decompressing alone, or checking in with colleagues via video chat (something that is not often visualized) instead of focusing on the traditional tropes of staff busy at work. The need for a work-life balance that has been highlighted since the pandemic and is manifesting itself in phenomena such as quiet quitting will change the way companies visualize the world of work for the future.