When I first heard the term quiet cracking, I thought it was about a plumbing job. The ceiling was cracking, the floor was cracking—something was cracking and needed fixing. Imagine my surprise when I learned it was the latest addition to HR’s ever-expanding glossary of workplace phenomena.

HR buzzwords are easy to dismiss. They’re imperfect, often short-lived labels for very real shifts in the world of work. The problem isn’t the language itself, it’s how quickly organizations treat these trends as universal truths, and how rarely they stop to ask whether they actually apply to their own workforce.

Since the pandemic turned our work world upside down, we’ve been flooded with HR buzzwords: the Great Resignation, the Big Stay, quiet quitting, quiet hiring, career cushioning, QuitTok, job hugging, coffee badging and quiet cracking. In case you haven’t guessed it yet, quiet cracking is meant to describe the gradual, often unnoticed decline in employee satisfaction and engagement, leading to burnout, disengagement, and eventually, turnover. It’s catchy. It’s vague. And like many of its predecessors, it’s wide open to interpretation.

What’s remarkable is how these terms seem to appear out of thin air, and then almost overnight everyone on LinkedIn is talking about them. Before you know it, managers are sprinkling them into company briefings, and HR is being asked to “solve” the problem, often without a shred of evidence that it’s real, widespread or even relevant to their own organization.

I’ll admit it, every time I read about a new workplace buzzword, I instinctively roll my eyes. But here’s the thing: These terms don’t emerge in a vacuum. They gain traction because something real is happening beneath the surface.

The Great Resignation wasn’t a metaphor; it reflected a sharp and historically unusual increase in voluntary turnover. Job hugging followed when quitting rates dropped just as sharply and job security began to feel uncertain again. Quiet quitting coincided with stalled engagement, growing resistance to unpaid labor and blurred boundaries in hybrid work. These buzzwords didn’t invent new behaviors; they surfaced patterns that were already underway.

In psychology and other people-focused disciplines, the first step toward change is often naming the experience. Labeling something gives people permission to acknowledge it, discuss it and act on it. Think about burnout. Before it was widely recognized, this experience existed, but it was harder to talk about. The label didn’t solve the problem, but it opened the door to conversation awareness, and in some cases, meaningful change. Workplace buzzwords can serve a similar purpose. If we don’t name something, it’s harder to talk about it. And if we can’t talk about it, we can’t address it.

See also: Buzziest HR catchphrase of 2025: a look back

Where things start to go wrong is when organizations assume these trends apply equally everywhere.

These workforce dynamics are not evenly distributed across industries, job types or organizations, which is precisely why they can feel insightful to some employees and completely off-base to others. What looks like a meaningful signal in one context may seem exaggerated or irrelevant in another.

Take the Great Resignation. While it dominated headlines, it was far more pronounced in sectors like retail, hospitality and hourly work. Many organizations with long-tenured, stable workforces, such as parts of manufacturing, energy or highly unionized environments, experienced little movement at all. Treating it as a universal crisis led some employers to overcorrect, launching sweeping retention initiatives where turnover was never the core issue, while overlooking deeper engagement problems elsewhere.

The same is true for stress and job insecurity. The anxiety experienced by a federal employee worried about restructuring is very different from that of someone in a fast-growing tech or semiconductor company facing relentless performance pressure. The label may be the same, but the underlying drivers are not.

That’s why the most important question isn’t whether a buzzword is trending, but whether it reflects what’s actually happening in your organization.

Getting ahead of the next big HR buzzwords

You don’t need to wait for a trending term to tell you when your workplace culture needs attention, or when it’s time to address the deeper dynamics of trust, culture, communication or leadership. That insight comes from listening, observing and engaging with your people every day, not just when a hashtag is trending.

When the next buzzword trend appears, before jumping on the bandwagon, try this approach instead.

Pause: Resist the urge to immediately react because a new term is dominating headlines or circulating in leadership meetings. Take a moment to step back and consider: Is this a signal or just noise that comes with a new trend? For example: If “quiet quitting” is suddenly everywhere, don’t rush to launch a new engagement initiative just because it’s trending. Ask yourself, are we seeing real signs of this behavior internally, or are we simply reacting to media coverage?

Investigate: Test the trend against your own data and lived experience. Is this phenomenon showing up internally? What are employees saying in surveys, listening sessions, exit interviews or informal conversations? Don’t let a catchy label replace real diagnosis. For example, rather than interpreting terms like “career cushioning” as a lack of commitment, explore what’s driving the behavior. Use pulse surveys or anonymous Q&A tools to understand if employees are feeling uncertain about the future, and what you can do to build greater confidence and clarity.

Address: If there is something happening beneath the surface, focus on the root causes—burnout, misalignment, poor communication, disengaged leadership—that may be driving the symptoms behind the label. If, for example, feedback from exit interviews reveals patterns like poor team dynamics, lack of recognition or unclear expectations, focus on addressing those root issues and get to the bottom of what’s really driving people away.

Sustain: Quick fixes don’t change culture. They are the equivalent of slapping a Band-Aid on a deeper wound. Build systems that support ongoing dialogue, psychological safety, recognition and trust. Strengthen feedback loops so you’re not constantly reacting to problems but rather anticipating and preventing them.

This simple shift, from reacting to reflecting, can make all the difference between surface-level responses and lasting cultural impact.

So, no, organizations shouldn’t rely on buzzwords to create better workplaces. They shouldn’t be used to justify another meeting, workshop or slide deck. But understanding them doesn’t hurt. Even if a term doesn’t perfectly fit your organization, its popularity can signal broader workforce sentiment and offer a low-pressure way to start meaningful conversations.

Because in the end, quiet cracking, or whatever the next phrase turns out to be, isn’t really about the label. It’s about what it reveals. And smart organizations will use that insight to inform action, not just add another buzzword to the list.