“Loud Quitting” Is the New Self-Termination Trend — Here’s Why Employers Are Scared

You may've heard of "quiet quitting" while the term was making the rounds on TikTok. A slew of videos featuring people who expressed that they were resolved to stop trying to go above and beyond at their jobs and instead choosing to fly under the radar and coast while doing the bare minimum.

This philosophy was fueled in part in the conviction that people's employers ultimately don't care about them beyond the capital/profit they can extricate from the work that they are paid to perform.

This attitude towards silently quitting one's job and giving up on excelling in their careers at their current job, presumably to save their love for outside hobbies or postponing any passion they'd like to put into their jobs for another gig they find more agreeable or are more immediately excited about, may've been spurred on by record high inflation rates that hit the US economy in 2022.

Or, if you ask some folks, it's got everything to do with Gen Z ultimately being lazy and just not wanting to work.

Now, a new workplace termination trend is popping up online, the cleverly named "loud quitting."

So what is it exactly?

According to Gallup's 2023 "State of the Workplace" survey, around one out of every five employees have stated that they are "loud quitting" their jobs, i.e., they are going out of their way to disengage from their employers and even sabotage the brand's reputation to prospective new hires.

Business Insider writes: "Where quiet quitters tend to be more passive in their disengagement, loud quitters may actively undermine employers' goals and can damage the brand when it comes to attracting new employees."

The outlet quoted Jim Harter, who helped compile the Gallup report, added that "loud" quitters differ from "quiet" ones in that the latter demographic expressed that they're merely "not engaged" at their jobs.

The "loud" folks who are unhappy with their current roles, however, will jump at the opportunity to go to another company, even if it doesn't mean a pay bump.

So why would people "loud" quit as opposed to try and fly under the radar and apply to other jobs without giving any intimation that they're looking for other employment opportunities? Harter says it boils down to management.

The study states that 70% of "loud" quitters are ultimately left disgruntled with their current employment status due to dissatisfaction with their bosses.

It would appear that other instances of "loud quitting" can also refer to employees who go out of their way to air company dirty laundry or publicly decry the organizations that they've worked for on social media.

In a recently deleted Reddit post, one user posted to the site's r/antiwork sub about "loud quitting" their job as they were heading towards the end of their two years contract.

"Loud" quitting is also gaining traction on TikTok, with throngs of videos that have accumulated millions of views collectively sporting the #quittok hashtag, sparking a trend where folks either record themselves quitting their jobs, talking smack about their former employers, or glorifying their decision to leave their positions behind.

Other forms of "loud" quitting are featured in videos where folks hop on a video set to some sad music with tears in their eyes as they discuss their very difficult decision to leave a vocation that they initially thought they would love.

And while there are folks who willfully shed tears on camera while expounding upon how difficult of a decision it was to leave their chosen line of work, there are others who are quick to trash their former employers and accuse them of illegal activity, like the TikToker below.

It's not hard to imagine why employers wouldn't be happy to hear that their former workers are hopping on the web and talking smack about their jobs and glorifying the fact that they're leaving a place that made them so unhappy.

What do you think of the "loud quitting" trend? Can you understand where employees are coming from and understand that they want to air their grievances? Or is this not a new phenomena and that folks are just recording themselves talking about it more?