12/01/2024

Demystifying Quiet Quitting and Quiet Firing Through a Racialized Lens for Career Practitioners

By Frank Gorritz FitzSimons

Although quiet quitting and quiet firing have been areas of focus in recent news, a critical social justice lens is required to understand both quiet quitting and quiet firing. A critical social justice lens refers to perspectives that recognize racism as a system designed to harm and subordinate racially minoritized people (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017). This lens is especially important to consider given that many minoritized community members have been engaging in quiet quitting for years and enduring quiet firing, while putting their limited social privileges at risk (Ward, 2022).

What is Quiet Quitting?

Quiet quitting is described as employees steering away from away from American culture’s perspectives of “playing the rat race to get ahead” in professional endeavors, as well as overworking to obtain certain job privileges, titles, and positions (Pearce, 2022). Recent survey data expressed that 65% of employees feel that the COVID-19 pandemic served as a major contributor to attitudes about work, contributing to the revolution of challenging overachievement in the workplace (Turner, 2023). The phenomenon of quiet quitting raises an essential question as to whether current work-life balance expectations are skewed toward overachievement and hustling for promotions.

Based on prevalent ideas of capitalism, employers can contribute to employees’ work investment, pushing them to work harder and longer to maintain a company’s status and wealth, without compensating workers with sufficient living wages (Bush, 2022; Dimaggio, 2022). Therefore, quiet quitting is a current act of resistance that challenges employers’ abuses of influence, to create and maintain healthier lives for workers.

Factors that Contribute to Quit Quitting

When exploring some of the factors that contribute to quiet quitting among people of color, the following factors have been noted:

• Laborious processes in needing to code-switch (Han, 2022; Whiting, 2020)
• Inequitable demands (White, 2015)
• Racial microaggressions (Ridley, 2005)

For example, people of color have noticed increased workplace expectations with little tolerance for mistakes compared to white co-workers in the same work environment (White, 2015). Furthermore, people of color face the pressure of needing to work twice as hard to be recognized fairly compared to white colleagues (Han, 2022; Whiting, 2020). Systemic racism is also often so prevalent in American workplaces that many people of color find themselves needing to code-switch their racial identities to be seen as a lesser threat compared to others. Specifically, code-switching occurs when people of color feel a pressure to either shift or mask their behaviors to fit within white supremacy, which holds detrimental effects for people of color (Cooks-Campbell, 2022; McCluney et al., 2019).

To understand these stressors through a racialized lens, white supremacy is the underlying set of values that perpetuate racial microaggressions and the dominance of white racial values throughout all types of social contexts in the United States (Kendi, 2017). When career practitioners can put into context how white values dominate diverse forms of self-expression (e.g., assertiveness) and perceptions of hard work, this racialized lens allows minoritized clients to feel validated in the types of racialized factors that contribute to quiet quitting. In addition, quiet firing is another phenomenon that impacts the wellness of communities of color across workplaces.

Defining Quiet Firing

Quiet firing is known as another job-related phenomenon where employers intentionally create unpleasant, unhealthy, and hostile work environments to single out certain employees and try to make them quit working in that job environment (Mishra, 2022; Ruvio & Morgeson, 2022). Examples of quiet firing include trying to remove reinforcers for employees to stay working at a particular work site (e.g., removing opportunities for promotion and salary raise) (Mishra, 2022). When applied to the racialized experiences among communities of color, quiet firing is a strong possibility that can occur based on one’s salience to their racial identity (Thornhill, 2015).

Carbado & Gulati (2013) highlighted discrimination related to racial proximity and activism, particularly when employers intentionally screen out applicants of color based on how much activism they identify with and deny these applicants for job opportunities and promotion. Specifically, a connection is recognized between employers intentionally screening out employees of color who embrace both their racial and advocacy-based identities and denying these employees of reinforcers that further their motivation to continue working in their job site (Carbado & Gulati, 2013; Mishra, 2022; Ruvio & Morgeson, 2022). Racial violence significantly contributes to how racial salience plays a role in workplace discrimination, as part of upholding white culture throughout the workplace (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017; Kendi, 2017). Therefore, career practitioners can consider the following strategies in their work:

• Educating themselves on the research and lived experiences of people of color when navigating diverse social contexts. These perspectives can further inform positive counseling relationships with people of color.
• Utilizing community cultural wealth in career work.  Career practitioners can benefit from learning about various factors of resilience that can benefit the well-being of minoritized groups when facing oppression in the workplace (Yosso, 2005).
• Addressing racially systemic workplace issues alongside clients through collective advocacy efforts (e.g., creating focus groups among workers who experience similar struggles, engaging in demonstration, etc.).

Conclusion

Career practitioners must be able to respond to current work trends and concerns that prioritize overworking to the point of burnout and harmful employer tactics rooted in racism. Through continuing to learn about racism dynamics that contribute to quiet quitting and quiet firing, career practitioners can support minoritized clients more effectively when navigating workplace oppression.  A second part of this article, to be published in 2025 will focus on the theory of work adjustment to racism in the workplace.

For more on this topic, access the following NCDA podcast:

References

Bush, M. (2022). Quiet quitting: Four strategies to correct the course. Canadian Management Centre, 8-11.

Carbado, D. W. & Gulati, M. (2013). Acting white? Rethinking race in post racial America. Oxford University Press.

Cooks-Campbell, A. (2022, March 1). Code-switching at work: What it is and why you need to understand it. BetterUp. https://www.betterup.com/blog/code-switching

Delgado, R. & Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction (3rd ed.). New York University Press.

Dimaggio, A. (2022, September 14). “Quiet quitting” is understandable - but it won’t save us from predatory capitalism. Salon. https://www.salon.com/2022/09/14/quiet-quitting-is-understandable--but-it-wont-save-us-from-predatory-capitalism/

Han, Y. (2022, September 17). ‘Quiet quitting is not for us’: Black employees share why quiet quitting is not for people of color - and why they’re outright quitting instead. Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/quiet-quitting-black-workers-employees-of-color-2022-9

Kendi, I. X. (2017). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. Bold Type Books.

McCluney, C. L., Robotham, K., Lee, S., Smith, R., & Durkee, M. I. (2019, November 15). The costs of code switching. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-costs-of-codeswitching

Mishra, A. D. (2022, December 15). Move over ‘quiet quitting,’ an old trend is back: ‘Quiet firing’. HR.com. https://www.hr.com/en/magazines/talent_management_excellence_essentials/december_2022_talent_management_excellence/move-over-%E2%80%98quiet-quitting%E2%80%99-an-old-trend-is-back-%E2%80%98q_lbp33p7h.html

Pearce, K. (2022, September 12). What is ‘quiet quitting’? Johns Hopkins University. https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/09/12/what-is-quiet-quitting/

Ridley, C. R. (2005). Setting culturally relevant goals. In P. B. Pederson (Ed.)., Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and therapy: A practitioner’s guide to intentional intervention (2nd Ed., pp. 106-123). Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452204468

Ruvio, A., & Morgeson, F. V. (2022, November 7). Are you being quiet fired? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/11/are-you-being-quiet-fired

Thornhill, T. (2015). Racial salience and the consequences of making white people uncomfortable: Intra-racial discrimination, racial screening, and the maintenance of white supremacy. Sociology Compass, 9/8, 694-703. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12287

Turner, J. (2023, March 29). Employees seek personal value and purpose at work. Be prepared to deliver. Gartner. https://www.gartner.come/en/articles/employees-seek-personal-value-and-purpose-at-work-be-prepared-to-deliver

Ward, M. (2022, September 18). Quiet quitting isn’t a new phenomenon, especially for those from marginalized backgrounds. 3 women share why they had to quiet-quit to reclaim their identities. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/quiet-quitting-marginalized-backgrounds-minorities-diversity-2022-9

White, G. B. (2015, October 7). Black workers really do need to be twice as good. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/why-black-workers-really-do-need-to-be-twice-as-good/409276/

Whiting, K. (2020, November 10). Code-switching: 4 forum voices on what it is - and why we need to talk about it. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/code-switching-systemic-racism-work/

Yosso, T. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006

Frank Gorritz FitzSimons, Ph.D., LPC is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Florida Gulf Coast University and a licensed professional counselor. Dr. Gorritz FitzSimons is a nationally recognized scholar and counselor educator on topics including providing affirmative counseling care to queer and transgender communities of color, providing multicultural supervision, utilizing diverse approaches to counseling work, as well as addressing and disrupting white supremacy in counselor education. His ongoing research interests include enhancing an understanding of minority stress, improving social justice counseling competencies, and promoting affirming approaches to substance use counseling practice. Dr. Gorritz FitzSimons has also received the Counselors for Social Justice 'Ohana Award in 2022, as well as SAIGE's Making It Happen Award in 2024, for his dedication to social justice across communities in both counseling and advocacy work. Frank Gorritz FitzSimons can be reached at fgorritz@fgcu.edu