Work stress is a growing problem in the Netherlands. A fifth of the working population had burnout complaints last year, it emerged this week National Working Conditions Survey from research institute TNO and statistics agency CBS. That is more than 1.6 million people. The problem is proportionally greatest among young people: one in four 25 to 34-year-olds suffers from burnout at work.
An important cause of these problems is a disturbed work-life balance. The increase in working from home – partly due to the corona crisis – has blurred the boundary between leisure and work. And many people have the feeling that they always have to be ‘on’; email and social media are constantly present. Network platform LinkedIn discovered that half of the people who work from home feel that they have to work harder there, mainly to show that they are serious about their job.
TNO also mentions performance pressure, uncertainties in life and social pressure are the main sources of stress among young workers. The feeling of always having to do everything right, having to be constantly available, caring responsibilities and the combination of work and family increase the pressure they experience. Social and financial uncertainty, in addition to career uncertainty, also play an important role.
Associate professor of work and organizational psychology Madelon van Hooff, affiliated with the Open University, conducts research into employee well-being and work stress. “A healthy work-life balance is possible, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for many people in this society to achieve that balance.”
A healthy work-life balance is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve
Madelon van Hooff organizational psychologist
Gerrien Anbeek, who focuses on leadership development and culture change, also regularly encounters this problem in her work for large international organizations. “Working from home has advantages, but can also cause difficulties.” According to her, remote monitoring of managers, for example, can lead to extra pressure on employees.
Organizations must therefore adapt, she believes, because ‘five days in the office’ is no longer coming back. “The fact that you meet each other physically a few days a week is valuable. Then make sure that these are effective, useful days – with consultation and brainstorms. These are logical reasons to attend. This way you can monitor employees while allowing them more freedom outside the office.”
The developments in the labor market since the corona pandemic and the changing needs of personnel are captured in a number of English terms that are rapidly gaining popularity: from quiet quitting and loud leaving until craze applying and quiet hiring. But what do these terms mean?
Quiet Quitting
In short: quiet quitting means only doing what you really have to do in the workplace. You carry out regular tasks, but taking extra responsibility and ‘going all the way’ are no longer an option.
Madelon van Hooff: “Here it often revolves around the feeling that someone does not get enough return for what he or she invests in the job. For example, there is no appreciation from the employer, career opportunities are limited, or there are only short-term contracts.”
Nowadays work is no longer always the first priority. Van Hooff: “More and more people say ‘I work to live’ instead of ‘I live to work’. Then you are more likely to draw the line at tasks that may be expected of you, but are not part of your official job description.”
Think of helping a colleague with a project, or having a chat at the coffee machine; it will not easily be included in an employment contract, but in practice those who do not do it will be held accountable for it. Making such a distinction is called in jargon organizational citizenship behavior.
Van Hooff: “You can individually choose to be a quiet quitter, but what if you are the only one in a team who does that?”
Gerrien Anbeek believes quiet quitting is potentially harmful for employers and employees. “Due to corona, some people stayed longer in a position in which they were unhappy due to uncertainty and invested less in their work. That is undermining for the person himself, but also for the culture of the organization.”
And in addition, says Anbeek: “You not only make a career by carrying out your work punctually, but also by speaking to the manager during a team outing and taking care of the work of colleagues during illness.”
Research by the American market researcher Gallup now shows that this is also the case loud quitters are; employees who explicitly complain about their employer and openly leave tasks outside the minimum required. The researchers estimate that the limited involvement of both categories in their work costs the global economy up to 8.8 thousand billion dollars (8.2 thousand billion euros).
Loud Leaving
In short: loud leaving is actively announcing that you have finished work, to monitor the boundary between work time and private time.
According to LinkedIn, about 46 percent of working people have had experience with loud leaving in recent years. Employees no longer feel like working late into the evening without adequate compensation.
Van Hooff: “An important way to prevent or recover from work stress is to guard your boundaries well. You need to be able to disconnect from work and not be constantly ‘activated’ – although this is not equally important for everyone. Some people want to separate work and private life, while others thrive when they merge.”
Anbeek sees loud leaving as the counterpart of quiet quitting: actively setting boundaries instead of implicitly. “It is certainly clearer and in many cases also healthier for all parties. I also encourage this with managers. If they show that they leave earlier to exercise or for a weekend away, employees are more likely to dare to do so and a healthier work-life balance can be created. Ultimately, it is also important for an organization that employees feel good about themselves.”
Rage Applying
In short: rage applying is applying more or less haphazardly to many vacancies at the same time out of frustration with the current job, in the hope of quickly finding something else. It often only happens with a CV and without a specific letter.
Ashmita Krishna Sharma, who advises companies on diversity and inclusion with her agency Sparkling Gems, attributes this trend mainly to the stronger position of employees in a tight labor market. “They speak out and dare to express dissatisfaction more honestly. Look at the growing number Open to workicons [belangstelling voor een nieuwe baan] on LinkedIn. The workload that has been increasing for years is also a reason for people to look around more quickly: perhaps the grass really is greener on the other side. And applying for jobs is becoming easier and easier. Sometimes you can respond to a vacancy at the touch of a button, and with the help of ChatGPT, a motivation letter can be created in no time.”
Employees speak out and dare to express dissatisfaction more honestly
Ashmita Krishna Sharma diversity and inclusion advisor
Moreover, according to her, rage applying is not for everyone. “People with an Arabic-sounding surname are still 60 percent less likely to be asked for an interview. Jobs are less available for them.”
Gerrien Anbeek is not a fan of sending out CVs at random. “In general, applying haphazardly does not work well. Rather, adapt your CV per vacancy and ensure that your motivation letter stands out and is written based on the vacancy. It is more effective to invest time in this than to respond to ten times as many vacancies with just a CV.”
Quiet Hiring
In short: quiet hiring stands for the phenomenon that organizations add work to functions, instead of hiring extra people for them.
Quiet hiring is on the rise because vacancies cannot be filled for work that needs to be done, or because there is no budget for it. Then it is important for employers to let their own staff do those extra tasks.
In the 1980s this was called job enrichment or job broadening, and it was intended to make jobs more attractive in terms of content and give employees more options to manage their work.
Anbeek: “With quiet hiring, organizations focus on developing talent that they already have in-house and that has proven itself. Today, companies have fewer layers of management, meaning employees have less opportunity to be promoted. Adding new activities to positions can ensure that they remain satisfied for longer. They also gain extra relevant experience that they can use in the rest of their career.”
But if employers are purely concerned about savings, this can turn against them. Piling task after task without extra salary or better secondary employment conditions promotes demotivation. Van Hooff: “If you let people do a lot without proportionate compensation, this has negative consequences for their motivation and stress level.”