Mission-driven organizations thrive on team engagement. Because they rarely have the financial and organizational resources to compete with the private sector, many nonprofit leaders and HR professionals feel pressure to stay up-to-date with the shifting tides of the labor market. Sifting through the statistics around hiring and retention, tracking indicators of economic headwinds, and applying all this information to your unique organization and mission can be helpful, but it might be difficult to parse which trends you need to pay attention to, and which can be ignored.
If you’ve read any recent articles about workplace culture, you’ve probably encountered one of the catchy terms for a workplace trend. “The Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting” have been replaced by “The Great Stay” and “Job Hugging”. Some newer ones include “Quiet Vacationing”, “AI fatigue”, and “Quiet Cracking”, and maybe you saw something about “side hustles”. Like any trend or indicator, these can be a useful shorthand, but it’s important that you examine the terms objectively and consider if and how they might impact your organization, if at all.
Here are some of the most popular terms you might see, and what you can do to address them at your organization:
Quiet vacationing
This trend is primarily geared towards remote and hybrid organizations, where extended absences from the workplace are normal. This dynamic is a challenging one to track, as it describes a situation where someone takes time away from work to vacation but does not use their allotted paid time off (PTO). This trend has been attributed to stress and the generally low amount of PTO people receive in the United States. Experts say this trend speaks to a larger issue of work-life balance, and that these practices are the natural outcome at jobs where work can mean being responsive outside of normal work hours, or where people are so busy that they don’t feel comfortable asking for time off.
Job hugging
A more recent trend, this doesn’t necessarily describe a particular behavior but rather a lack of movement. Workers staying in their jobs longer than expected can be a sign of economic anxiety, a difficult job market, and concerns about the marketability of their skills. Some describe this as an indicator of problems to come, as labor market stagnation reflects a lack of confidence in the economy as a whole
AI fatigue
It has been three years since the public release of ChatGPT, and the flood of new “AI-powered” solutions and tools in every aspect of life has created an atmosphere of constant change as jobs are either augmented or automated with AI tools. However, more and more workers have been speaking up about the constant churn of tooling, some of which doesn’t work well or work at all, and the negative impact this has had on their productivity. They point to the gap between the high enthusiasm for these tools and the reality, which can involve difficult implementations, constant breaking changes to their work process, and other issues. Many AI tools promise efficiency and automation, but improper implementation or experimentation with too many of them can have the opposite result, creating extra work and mistakes.
Are you sensing a theme?
As you might have already noticed, these terms, along with most of the others you have heard, don’t describe a widespread and easily documented trend, but rather provide an example of a behavior that points to a broader issue in the economy, employment, and work. It would probably be odd if you started describing showing up for work consistently for more than a few years as “job hugging”, as this is what the majority of people do at most jobs. Working at a job for a longer time than average isn’t a trend unless you place it specifically in the context of the labor market.
Rather than worrying about whether these trends are happening at your organization, you can use them as motivation to drill down into the underlying issues they come from, such as overwork, stress, a poor work-life balance, or the constant churn of new AI-backed tools. They also speak to a constant challenge in most organizations, which is the issue of communication. The popularity of these trends shows a desire to understand the motivations of employees without addressing the most common issues they face.
Can following these trends help?
Because these trends do often reflect common currents in workplace life and the concerns of your staff, these topics might be helpful for you to reexamine the ways you measure things like employee happiness, work-life balance and other key issues.
For example, trends like “quiet cracking” and “quiet quitting”, described as underperformance due to stress and burnout, are rarely talked about in detail, particularly around why this has become so common. Changes in management and structure, return to office mandates, persistent layoffs, and other concrete issues are not discussed. Grabbing on to each new trend and taking the claims at face value can be counter-productive, as you are more focused on the symptoms rather than the cause.
As a nonprofit leader, you can use these discussions as a chance to get into the details of what your employees want. Understanding these trends as responses to broader structural issues can help point you to sources of concern your staff might feel, particularly overwork, inflexible working arrangements or other issues. In particular, fostering a workplace that has open and receptive communication, allowing your team to provide input, can help you address the root cause of these trends. This can also give you a distinct advantage when hiring or backfilling a role, as your workplace will stand out as one that is responsive to and supportive of its staff.
About Us
For more than 40 years, 501(c) Services has been a leader in offering solutions for unemployment costs, claims management, and HR support to nonprofit organizations. Two of our most popular programs are the 501(c) Agencies Trust and 501(c) HR Services. We understand the importance of compliance and accuracy and are committed to providing our clients with customized plans that fit their needs.
Contact us today to see if your organization could benefit from our services.
Are you already working with us and need assistance with an HR or unemployment issue? Contact us here.
The information contained in this article is not a substitute for legal advice or counsel and has been pulled from multiple sources.
