Are the rules at the workplace changing and who has the bargaining chip?

Like Arya, Delhi-based Sandeep Sharma, who takes his parenting responsibilities seriously, wants to spend more time with his eight-year-old child. He doesn’t want his wife alone to make all the compromises as more and more women, like her, drop out of the workforce. “The last two years made me feel how much my daughter needs me and I have chosen not to go back to my crazy schedules,” he says.

Both Arya and Sharma are representative of the “quiet quitting” movement where conscientious millennials have decided to disengage from an overwrought work culture because it consumes their personal time. They continue to be employed in their company but will only do this much and no further, the corner office be damned. Not only that, having harvested a slew of benefits, they have realised the measure of their talent and their strike rate. Therefore, they demand to be cared for and valued rather than be seen as a workhorse, which will gallop that extra mile without any gain.

In short, Gen Z, or the future workforce, is laying out the cards on the table, renegotiating their terms of engagement, using their talent as a bargaining chip with their employers for working out terms favourable for themselves. They do not feel beholden to a top corporation as they are capable of making money in other ways. They want to be challenged creatively and be rewarded for it. As the World Economic Forum, in its September 2 article on its website, quotes Zaid Khan, a 24-year-old software engineer and musician in New York, whose quiet quitting video has gone viral on TikTok, “You’re still performing your duties but you’re no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life.”

This is different from the big resignation, where people chose to step out of the system altogether. The new rule is to stay within the system, not giving up their demarcated responsibility but demanding that they be noticed because of it. Often, it is a stopgap before the big resignation.

According to American analytics and advisory company Gallup’s poll this year, quiet quitters make up at least 50 per cent of the US workforce, forcing corporations to revise their contractual rules. Europe is already testing the four-day work week for the same pay to hold on to talent, with Belgium, Iceland, Scotland and Wales leading the experiment. The results have been mixed. While the West struggles to come to terms with the evolution of a new work culture, its cascading effect is being felt among top corporates in India, too. Flexibility is now being seen as an enabler if companies want their employees to bring their “whole” selves back to work.

Zainab Patel, diversity, inclusion and equity leader at Pernod Ricard India, who herself did the big resignation and changed sectors, attributes the trend to a stagnancy brought about by burnouts. “Job switches are not just about a better-paying proposition, they are about doing something interesting, contributing creatively and doing justice to your talent. Some are using the extra time they previously put into their jobs to acquire new skills that allow them to take up newer projects or plan start-ups. Even those who have been laid off in badly-hit sectors, like retail, are choosing to wait it out. Across India, the attrition rate is around 20 to 30 per cent this year and contrary to popular belief, it is the salary-paying companies that are losing staff. Anecdotally, about 50 per cent people do not want to go back to a full working week,” says Patel.

Of course, not all can swim with the tide. It is mostly the younger employee pool who are opting for such an attitudinal change. It’s a different landscape and a generational shift. “When I joined the workforce, perks felt good but never mattered as they do today. A salary hike was important to us but continuity and stability mattered more. My generation was far more reverential towards authority and would burn the midnight oil when asked. Today’s skilled workforce can undoubtedly get what it wants in a vastly competitive space that we didn’t have; we couldn’t risk it. Also, we made conventional choices in savings and were not aggressive about investments. Youngsters are better market players and know how to grow their savings,” says Arun Bakshi, 62, who retired from a traditional manufacturing company. Bakshi’s daughter, 26-year-old Maya, likens his working life to “modern slavery.” Now working in a not-for-profit organisation for child welfare, she is happy pursuing what she wanted all along and not “become an automaton.”

Many millennials across sectors reflect Maya’s attitude to work, media persons being the most noticeable. Take Sandhya Menon, 30, who works in a top publication and has adopted the quiet quitting mode over the last 10 months. “Media was once touted as the sunrise industry. Agreed, the pandemic hit it hard. But what does loyalty get you when the management hands you the pink slip without batting an eyelid after 20 plus years of service? I’ve seen committed seniors being offloaded for bottom lines. That hurts and makes this whole ‘work is passion’ meaningless. Each of us has lost a dear one to the pandemic. Wish we had spent more time with them instead. So why give it my all?” she asks.

Sharma’s outlook is illustrative of a millennial world view. The young professional sits with his fund manager before he considers a job switch, assesses his investment options and sustainable returns. He has an upper hand and feels assured that his skills will always find a parking slot. Such confidence comes from a shortage of critical talent in the industry, particularly in sectors powering the new economy. “According to the Gartner INC survey done in February, over half of the chief human resources (HR) officers reported shortage of critical talent as the number one trend impacting organisations,” says Arun Chawla, director-general, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Does this mean that companies are thinking about new ideas for workforce retention? “Social media is normalising this conversation. Companies need to understand their employees’ psyche and work out a few fundamental changes in the way they have to be engaged. Remote and hybrid got normalised during COVID, and, today, employees are looking for meaningful engagement at work, which will make their travel to the office ‘worthwhile.’ Companies are coming to terms with the fact that having a work-life balance does not diminish someone’s commitment to the value they bring to the table,” says Chawla.

The dropouts are not just choosing work-life balance. Courtesy the gig economy, they are finding an abundance of new opportunities. This has resulted in moonlighting (holding parallel jobs made easier by a work-from-home format) or a series of consultancies. “Apart from legal and behavioural aspects related to dual employment, this has certainly put tremendous pressure on business leaders to decode and reflect upon employee psyche, preferences and integrity,” adds Chawla.

Patel senses a new trend where employees with high skill sets are leveraging perks by one company to get the second company to raise its bar or forget the hire. “Gen Z today wants instant gratification. Research shows 75 per cent of them are looking to be promoted within the first year of joining. Slow and steady wins the race, perhaps, is a thing of the past now,” she says.

Appreciation is affirmation that your value is measured in the company and it is worth investing your working years in. Silence means nobody cares for your talent and expertise. Salary may honour your effort but perks celebrate individualism. “Instant feedback on the work coupled with praise helps young employees build confidence in themselves, enhances competence and, ultimately, betters productivity and engagement. Regular conversations with them about how their work is contributing to the larger picture of the company connects their purpose to the company,” says Chawla.

The idea that the office is a part of an individual’s extended family has been ingrained by monolithic companies in India. Home-grown conglomerates like the Tatas and the Birlas have used familial benevolence as a tool of workforce retention. Now, there is a serious shift in this work culture.

The “we are family” concept has been replaced by the idea of a “dream team”, where brand power is about collecting strands of excellence and arranging them mathematically like an equation rather than forging a cohesive spirit among individuals who are just about adequate. Much of this gained currency with Netflix’s revolutionary HR policy, which changed the contours of the employer-employee relationship. This has now become a global mantra. As its chief talent officer Patty Mc Cord wrote in the Harvard Business Review (January-February 2014): “Hire, reward and tolerate only fully formed adults. Ask workers to rely on logic and common sense instead of formal policies. Scrap formal reviews in favour of informal conversations. The best thing you can do for employees — a perk better than foosball or free sushi — is hire only ‘A’ players to work alongside them. Forget throwing parties and handing out T-shirts, make sure every employee understands what the company needs most and exactly what’s meant by high performance.”

But in the Indian context, there will be a different template for start-ups and new-age companies, who are offering the “work from anywhere” option, to traditional and service-oriented companies who are now making it mandatory for their employees to return to work. Besides, the skilled workforce may not have the openings it is entitled to.

“Be it the big resignation or quiet quitting, both apply to highly skilled professionals who are looking to sell themselves to the highest bidder, who will value their focussed contribution than office hours. There is still a genuine crisis of people looking out for jobs going by the employment data of the last six months. With a flat economy and a recession predicted in 2023, organisations are also looking at streamlining processes. Should they decide that the ‘cost of quiet quitting’ is negotiable, then what is being touted as a workplace revolution may end with a whimper. For many, livelihood is the only issue even today,” says Manish Sabharwal, vice chairman, Team Lease.

Quiet quitting could be misread as laziness, lack of initiative, untrustworthiness, or misplaced arrogance. Aware of the risks, Sabharwal says, “There cannot be a Diet Coke approach to work, where you want all the goodies without the heavy-duty calories. So, though there may not be a radical shift in the overall hierarchical rules of engagement, employers will allow more diverse choices like flexibility of operations while not mainstreaming them.”

But one thing is for sure. The terms of recruitment are no longer an imposition of authority but a negotiation of a customised package.