While I do maintain an active Twitter account, I have never been one to convert my every random thought bubble into a Tweet. I imagine I would have more followers if that were my habit.

However, I have succumbed to this temptation on occasion. A while back I tweeted that the life-hacking suggestions I read on Twitter are mostly just aphorisms I heard as a kid. And they’ve just been repackaged as original Twitter life hacks.

After all, “Work while others rest” really isn’t the most original advice. That’s what my dad did.

An unfair Tweet? Maybe. But who cares, it’s Twitter. And it was a rare Tweet from me anyway.

I’ve been having a similar reaction to the new language emerging to describe toxic workplace trends. After all, isn’t “quiet quitting” just what we used to call “goldbricking”?

The New Toxic Trait

Now there’s a new one. It’s apparently still quiet. But deadly. “Quiet Constraint” is the term being affixed to an apparently now prevalent workplace behavior. Particularly among GenZ co-workers.

What is it? Apparently, Quiet Constraint is when co-workers intentionally hold back from sharing valuable knowledge with their colleagues. We used to call this “being an a***hole”. Or maybe, “being a sh*tty co-worker”. More recently this might have been considered passive-aggressive behavior. Now it has a very specific name. But please do it quietly.

Media stories about Quiet Constraint started popping up last month, and it didn’t take long for the phenomenon to get measured.

Widespread Quiet Constraining

According to a recent survey by Kahoot, more than half (58%) of employees say that they intentionally hold back from sharing valuable knowledge with their colleagues. GenZ workers hit this one out of the park. A whopping 77% of GenZ respondents admit to silently sitting on beneficial information in the workplace.

Now that Quiet Constraint has entered the zeitgeist, company leaders are weighing in on how to defend against corrosive habits like this in the workplace.

We recently spoke to Rocketlane CEO Srikrishnan Ganesan, who says these trends reflect a diminishing focus on company culture. California-based Rocketlane sells customer onboarding software.

“Trends such as quiet quitting or quiet constraint shine the spotlight on the need for businesses to invest in building a strong team culture,” Ganesan said.  “And additionally create robust systems and processes that prioritize visibility, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.”

So here’s an obvious question. Why do workers quietly constrain? There doesn’t seem to be one clear answer. But it seems to have a lot to do with a lack of collegiality and trust among coworkers aggravated by the growing use of remote and hybrid workplaces. It is also tied to overall low levels of employee engagement.

Feels like it’s a great time to be a corporate culture consultant.

Music to Howard’s Ears?

And this trend may also be music to the ears of someone like Howard Lerman, the Yext founder who is now building Ro.am, which is being billed as an operating system for hybrid workplaces. Ro.am has set itself up as an alternative to Zoom.

Ro.am asserts that it does a better job of fostering workplace collaboration and collegiality by making it easier to have the kinds of short, spur-of-the-moment meetings in a virtual setting that improve workplace creativity and efficiency. Or at least compared to the default 30-minute Zoom meetings that Lerman so viciously mocks. A bit more on Lerman, Ro.am, and Zoom tomorrow.