Christine:  So I'm sure anyone who's been on social media, especially TikTok, has heard this phrase quiet quitting. The millennials have invented it, but is it actually new? I mean, working to rule would be what I would call it. The baby boomers are giving off saying, "Well, in my day, it was called shirking". So they're not happy with it. What exactly is it, Seamus?

Seamus:  Well, the aspect of quietly quitting, I think for me anyway, is something that I've been hearing maybe for around just 6 to 8 weeks, something along those lines, this phrase developing.

And essentially, it is where you have employees, and the finger is being pointed at the younger generation of employees, where they are essentially saying, "If my job is 9:00 to 5:00, I will work 9:00 to 5:00, and when 5:00 finishes, I will close my computer down and I will cease working at that point, or I leave the office", or whatever it is if they're working from home. And it's the aspect that they feel that they are paid to do a job and they will do that job, and it's the above-and-beyond aspect of it.

I suppose when I think about it back in my day, if you wanted to push through with your career and you wanted to be seen to be going above and beyond, you wanted to be seen maybe staying late and showing an interest in the job and doing what it took to get the job done. Often hard work, as they say, is rewarded. And this quietly quitting aspect is doing the job and essentially no more than that.

Now, it may mean just that you have very efficient employees that can get the job done in those hours maybe with the technology advances and all of that sort of stuff. But then whether or not that does reflect badly, whether that's an expectation now that that's all that's going to happen . . .

I mean, I'm a bit embarrassed to tell you at 43 that I do be on TikTok the odd time, and I do see these videos of . . . And they generally tend to be younger folk, I have to say, where they're being taught to politely ask for additional monies or salary for additional duties that they're being asked to do. I'm amazed by it. I find it fascinating. I love watching them and I laugh every time that I watch them.

But it's this aspect of, "Well, if you would like me to do further, what is my compensation for that?" It's put in this way. A very polite way, not an aggressive way, but it's clearly the message that is being pushed there.

So we've heard these sayings "act your wage, not your age". These things of dealing with your job as in almost that you do the job that you're paid to do, that is commensurate with your job.

We see job advertisements where they will say the salary will be equivalent to what the job is, but it seems to be this pushback now of, "I'll go in and do the job, but I'm not doing anything further".

I think a little bit of that has come through with COVID and the lockdowns and people working from home and the ability to say, "Well, look, I can get the job done in these hours and it gives me time to do other things that I want to do".

And whether it is they want to undertake a hobby or they want to look at educational aspects or whatever it is, sometimes even second jobs, I think that it has come through from there.

But certainly, there's this trend at the minute that seems to be, "I'll do the job and I'll do no more", and it sort of just is very different, I suppose, from what you would normally expect if somebody is wanting to push on.

You would hear things normally of, "They're a great worker. They did this. They got that done". That aspect of almost trying to seek to increase your responsibility in your role and carve out and create a role for yourself would've been where it would've been previously.

But interestingly, in relation to all of that, whenever I was reading up on this, I did come across . . . You'd sent me an article about this quietly firing as well. So the response to quietly quitting has been quietly firing. That does seem to me to have been a concept that has been there for a long while, and it's essentially where the employer stops giving the employee responsibility, withdraws elements of their role, freezes them out, in the hope that they'll just leave and go away. So it's the two aspects of it.

Christine:  Yeah, I suppose there are two sides of the coin: the quiet quitting and the quiet firing. Now, quiet quitting is a very difficult thing for HR to deal with. Quiet firing is a fairly risky enterprise in my mind because you open yourself up to all sorts of, "Well, are you doing this because I'm a woman? Are you doing this because I've had sick leave and I'm disabled?" You may open yourself up to that, whereas the quiet quitting, it seems like a bit of a genius move if you want to do as little as possible.

As you were talking, I was having a laugh because I could just imagine some of the dusty partners that I trained under when I was in my 20s, and the idea that I'd have my coat on at 5:01 and be out the door, I could just imagine the look on their face as I said, "Well, this is what I'm paid to do". But we have a different generation that seem to be happy with that.

There may also be an aspect of the jobs are not as good. If you're working for minimum wage maybe in a warehouse that they monitor your toilet breaks, maybe you feel like it is more justified in just doing this much and no more.

Seamus:  Yeah, I do think that it's a cultural aspect as well maybe in a lot of workplaces. And I think that if you do have an employee that is working to rule, is there an aspect in the place of work where maybe they feel that they are not being probably rewarded in terms of salary, that there isn't a training programme where they can advance through, that they're not being mentored?

I think it does provide an opportunity for employers to look and have a good examination of why you would have employees that do that or feel that way. Is it because there are shortcomings in the place of work?

I think, also, it's an employee's market at the minute in a lot of ways. There's insufficient staff, or what appears to be, to meet needs at the minute. I mean, to an extent, it's their market at the minute.

And I suppose it depends on what specific types of industry you're working in. We know that there are shortcomings in hospitality and things like that as well, and a lot of decisions were made over COVID of where people wanted to do what made them happy and they didn't want to do their job anymore that they didn't enjoy.

But I suppose it's a good opportunity to examine . . . And it's interesting now when you see job advertisements and the types of enticements that employers are putting on. You really do need to put your shoes into the feet of a young employee and think about what it is that they would want out of their job.

Yes, I think salary is a big part of it. I think our prior polls have told us that, but it's not the only factor. And it is about having a workplace where people can come and enjoy and have the ability to expand and further their career as well.

Where there are those opportunities within the workplace, and maybe if there's a competitiveness in relation to that, that's where you might see employees starting to strive to push for those.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody has to work 20 hours a day. I think realistically there's a difference between working in London than there is in Belfast or in Northern Ireland. But I think it is that point around it is a time to be self-critical about your workplace and see what those shortcomings might be and what you can do to try to make it a good place to work and to encourage your employees and try to help them to move along.

Christine: Yeah, I think the important message really is don't just roll your eyes and think, "Oh, the millennials are at it again". You have to look behind why this is happening and look at your workplace culture. Are there any changes you can make? Are people feeling valued? And I think then you will start to see people become more engaged.

Let me just have a quick look at the questions. We've got a question here back on our bonfire of rights topic, Seamus. Are there any particular EU laws that the current government have been accused of looking to replace or remove? I mean, they've told us GDPR is going. That immediately springs to my mind, but have you seen any others in your research, Seamus?

Seamus: Well, I suppose it's the aspect . . . I didn't see Jacob Rees-Mogg's speech at the party conference, but I did read about it. And essentially, it was almost triumphant in relation to the pulling back of workers' rights, and at a time in the economy . . . You really do have this passion happening. We have a lot of strike action going on. We have a lot of unhappy employees due to working terms and conditions and salaries, and then you also have the government saying, "Well, we know you're really unhappy about that. We're just going to do away with your rights about that altogether".

So I think the main ones to watch out for are probably the ones that are set out in the poll there. That appears to be the commentary in relation to it. But again, you just don't know where it's going to.

The aspect of maybe of the increase or moving back towards that zero hours contract aspect might happen again, and those are the concerns that everybody has in relation to zero hours workers' rights and their vulnerability in relation to maybe abuses and things like that as well.

So it's that general rollback of the rights. But I think it's really one that we're just going to have to watch out for, and I'm worried that it's going to be something that is going to go really quickly.

Christine: I think we're just getting indications. I mean, one indication that I've seen is they've said gender pay gap reporting, which obviously only applies in England and Wales, that they're going to change the threshold on that to workplaces with 500 or more. So they see gender pay gap reporting as red tape. That's an indication of things that they see as red tape.

And they, of course, paused it during COVID, so they obviously think that's not a particularly important piece of legislation, which personally as a woman I find fairly disturbing.

But at the minute, really, it's all questions and no answers at the minute, isn't it?

Seamus: Yeah. Certainly, some of the other stuff that I read about as well was this factoring of salaries, and that if you earn more than £50,000 a year, you might have a reduction in your rights certainly in relation to unfair dismissals and things like that as well, and maybe tapering that.

And then I read somewhere else that it might not be £50,000, that it might be £100,000 a year instead, where if you're earning in the sort of upper thresholds, you would have a reduction in relation to your rights, that employers might be able to remove your rights more easily.

I suppose the overriding position tends to be that . . . I think when it comes to employee rights, we are better off here generally in Northern Ireland when you think about the fact that in order to get employment rights in Northern Ireland, you only have the 52 weeks in continuous employment, where in England it's two years rather than one here. So we tend, I think, to be more protected here in Northern Ireland than what they do be anyway across the water.

But I do remember back 2006 and there was a . . . Even the statutory sort of grievance procedure was removed at the time, and that was due to economic circumstances. And you can see that that has always been the government's trend, is that when things get bad, it's cut the rights and try to get freer ability for employers to hire and fire and things like that as well.

But I'm just not quite sure at the minute, given everything that's going on, that it's the right time. You would think that stability would be the important factor right now and to try to bring that around rather than giving a huge shakeup.