At first there was a certain joy, coupled with great motivation. Three years ago, Vincent* landed the Grail: a permanent position in a large communications company in Paris. The young man is then determined to show his motivation and climb the ladder. For two years, he gave himself “100%” to his work, chaining projects in an “understaffed” team, extended days, calls or emails during his off hours. While remaining smiling with his colleagues, available for his bosses, modest in his file renderings. “I was asked to always provide more professionally and personally, and I did. When some got raises by showing off their big clients, I did double their work without bragging about it.” During the Covid, working from home, this Parisian even agrees to “work” until 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. in order to complete his projects. At the same time, some members of his team resign, without being replaced. But when, a few months later, Vincent asks for an increase and a revaluation of his missions, his requests are repeatedly refused. “I was told ‘yes, yes, I hear’, but nothing changed. I was made to apologize,” he says.
These successive refusals deeply demotivate the young worker. “I felt like I was bleeding myself at work for nothing. So I disconnected”. From one day to the next, the communicator makes the decision to adjust his workload and his schedules, respecting to the letter the missions mentioned in his contract. No more, no less: “Finishing after 6:30 p.m. is over. Just like accepting files for which I know we are understaffed, or smiling at my managers when there is a cruel lack of support from employees. This is the solution I have found to avoid cracking up”. This professional disengagement, fully assumed with his relatives, remains taboo in his workplace. “I’m not going to brag about finishing at 3 p.m. or not answering my emails over the weekend. I just see this strategy as a defense mechanism, before potentially finding something else. And I’m not the only one “. In recent months, this choice of professional life has indeed been the subject of thousands of testimonies on social networks, under the expression “quiet quitting”, translated into French by the notion of “silent resignation”.
“A new form of resistance”
On TikTok, this keyword, which appeared in July in the United States, has already accumulated more than 90 million views, combining humorous videos, satirical diversions, educational decryptions or analyzes on mental health at work. But beyond the simple trend and the media buzz around this concept, the notion of silent resignation “actually says a lot about our new relationships at work”, analyzes Christophe Nguyen, occupational psychologist and president of the Human Footprints firm. “Quiet quitting is just one more demonstration of a certain disenchantment of employees with the company’s broken promises, in terms of emancipation, recognition and well-being”, explains he. For Nicolas Roux, lecturer in sociology at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, this phenomenon would also have “nothing to do” with a simple “refusal” of work. “It is rather a new form of resistance to certain working conditions. We question the work itself, its sustainability, its quality”. The different terms used to define this phenomenon even make the sociologist wince. “‘Doing the bare minimum’, for example, implies that it would be shocking or astonishing to do only the work prescribed by the employer. Ditto for the expression ‘doing the minimum without getting fired’. Would that mean say that you risk getting fired for doing ‘only your job’? Expectations of performance, even outperformance in the business world are so high that it is almost surprising that some people only want to do the job. required work”.
For this researcher at the Center for Employment and Labor Studies (CEET), this trend is not new, and could be compared to concepts as old as the famous “work to rule”. “These microresistances are stories as old as capitalism,” says Nicolas Roux, paraphrasing the title of an article by sociologist Alain Cottereau. “They are part of the balance of power between employees and employers, by simply asking the question of how far it is possible to go in one’s relationship to work”. With one difference: social networks now make it possible to communicate about this feeling of detachment in the workplace: “Employees who previously would have just discussed it between colleagues in the corridors now have this medium to talk about it. On the other hand, it is difficult to cross the screens, and does not generate political or trade union revival, strictly speaking, nor collective demonstrations”.
Managers and qualified young people concerned
If no figures allow for the moment to objectify this phenomenon, Nicolas Roux nevertheless wishes to recall that it is “very localized”. “It mainly concerns executives and young qualified people. Many other socio-professional categories, such as workers, delivery people or mass distribution employees for example, cannot, or have difficulty, afford such resistance”. For Christophe Nguyen, this concept of silent resignation could nevertheless affect more and more senior profiles, aware of the new challenges of the quality of life in the workplace. “Like teleworking or late retraining, this trend raises the question of the meaning of our work for all generations, and calls into question the credibility of the link between the sacrifice of the employee and the recognition of the company”, decrypts- he.
Above all, this “bare minimum” strategy is to be linked, according to the psychologist, with an increase in psychosocial risks in the workplace. According to a survey carried out by the firm Empreintes Humaines between June 20 and 30, 2022, 41% of employees questioned considered themselves to be in psychological distress at work, and 37% indicated that they wanted to leave their company (i.e. 5 points more than in March 2022). No less than 39% of respondents also regret that objectives are given to them by their managers without their meaning or usefulness being specified, and 60% of employees say they no longer believe in promises of career development in their organization. “We talk about disengagement, but quiet quitting is closer to a form of disillusionment. It is an unfortunate lucidity of some employees who wonder if the value created by their company is fairly distributed, if the recognition of their peers and of their superiors is real, and if there really is a positive counterpart to the extra soul that they are always asked to put more into their work”, summarizes Adrien Chignard, work psychologist and founder of the firm Sens et consistency. “We talk a lot about corporate culture, achievement at work, membership in the company… We are in fact, very often, encouraged to do more than what is asked, not to count. What say these videos is that there is a risk of weariness with this perception of work, which often takes the form of exhaustion, even “burn-out”, “adds Nicolas Roux.
“I understood that we had to stop living for work”, testifies Quentin*, data scientist in a consulting firm in Paris. Like Vincent, this 27-year-old gave himself “fully” for more than two years. “I was super involved, I was very close to my managers, I looked good, I didn’t take a vacation for a year and a half”. Every day, he adds new informal missions to his to-do list: helping a colleague in need, accepting an unforeseen case, increasing overtime… Until he cracks. “I burned out, I had to stop working for a month and a half”. Since returning to work two weeks ago, the data scientist decided to impose a much less sustained pace. “I do the bare minimum. If I have to fill out a file, I do it with the minimum of info. If I have sport at 6 p.m. but my missions aren’t finished, too bad. I don’t jump anymore either. personal events as I tended to do before”.
Same speech on the side of François *, commercial in a start-up specialized in tech. He too had a burnout of several weeks after having “given too much” to his colleagues and his work. And he too speaks of a “click” after having made the decision to take a step back from his professional missions. “I have integrated the fact that I do not save lives. My relationship with my hierarchy, my peers, schedules, is no longer the same. In truth, it does not make sense to give so much” . Adrien Chignard, for his part, wants to warn. “Quiet quitting is generally a first step, which cannot be sustainable if your company continues to push you to hyper-invest, in a logic of incessant comparison. There are then two possible behaviors: the intention to absent, then that of quitting his job”.