If you enjoy food or being able to pay rent and fix your car, which tends to make weird noises you try to drown out by turning up the radio, you most likely have—or need—a job. So do many people, some of whom continue working even if they hate what they do.
That’s likely one of the reasons why employee stress levels have been sky high over the past few years. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, it has been rising for over a decade already, but the situation got especially grim in 2020, likely because of the chaos caused by the pandemic.
The report found that in 2022, nearly half of employed individuals participating in the survey felt stressed, making it the second year in a row with the number staying at record heights.
Delving deeper into the stress at work issue, Gallup’s report found that managers tend to play an outsized role in it. Such findings are not that difficult to believe bearing in mind how many people have to deal with an aggravating superior on a daily basis.
Back in 2018, the jobsite Monster.com carried out a survey, which revealed that nearly four-in-five people have had a toxic boss, whether at that point or earlier. Needless to say, working under the wing of someone that makes their time at work a living hell is typically more than enough to send an employee out the door.
According to psychotherapist and mental health advocate Allison Abrams, some of the main things that are no longer being tolerated by employees are an authoritarian organizational structure, harassment, bullying, and lack of boundaries when it comes to work-life balance.
“A healthy work-life balance is important now as it always has been and thankfully our society is beginning to understand that,” she told Bored Panda in a recent interview. “We still have a long way to go, especially in some industries, but at least the issue is being acknowledged and that's always the first step.”
Those who are patient enough to deal with an aggravating boss or other troubles at work might not actually leave the company, but they can opt for quiet quitting instead. Entailing psychologically disengaging from work and typically doing the bare minimum, such a form of quitting often results in not only an unhappy employee but financial losses for the company, too.
According to Gallup’s report, together with actively disengaged employees, low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion dollars. Moreover, it arguably does no favors for employee morale, either, as quiet quitters reportedly don’t foster supportive relationships with their fellow coworkers, their superiors, or the organization.
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In a world where “no one wants to work”, the fact that someone is not quitting—be it quietly or not—doesn’t mean they’re not open to the option. According to Gallup, roughly half of surveyed employees admitted they were looking out for or actively seeking a new job. Among the main reasons for keeping an eye out for a new job are seeking for an increase in pay, improved well-being, or opportunities to grow and develop.
Seeking greener pastures and having spent some time at home pondering what one wants out of their professional life (thanks again, Covid) has led to a wave of people “not wanting to work”; not where they used to, at least. Starting back in 2021, the wave was given the name of the Great Resignation, and saw some 71.6 million people say goodbye to their places of employment between April 2021 and April 2022, TechTarget reports.
A lot of those who quit during the Great Resignation were reportedly employees in the leisure, hospitality, and food services industries, who came to a realization that such a form of employment offered little job security. Representatives of the business sector arguably quit because of lack of a work-life balance, desire for more fulfillment, or simply because they wanted a better place to work.
“Since we have all lived through a global pandemic, for many of us, this has served as a reality check—a reminder of the brevity and preciousness of life,” Abrams told Bored Panda. “As is so often the case when this happens, we are encouraged to reevaluate our priorities and to ask ourselves what really matters in the larger scope of our lives. Grinding away in demanding jobs with unrealistically high expectations and little reward at the expense of our personal well-being and relationships is no longer acceptable.”