Quiet firing is spreading, but there are business risks to tactics to push workers out
As more companies demand employees spend more days in their workplaces each week, some critics claim that tightening return to office (RTO) rules in part aim to provoke resignations from employees unwilling to give up their remote or hybrid work arrangements. Data now suggests employer use of that indirect quiet-firing manner of reducing head count is far more widespread than previously suspected — and often involves tactics that go beyond ordering people back to their desks.
Reinforced RTO mandates, especially by large companies like Amazon and Starbucks, sparked accusations that management’s tighter in-office requirements are a cover for pushing flexibility-loving workers to quit. It turns out, businesses are also using other methods to trim head count, including cutting worker benefits, increasing workloads, delaying pay raises, or gradually isolating targets in the workplace until they resign. A recent survey of 1,128 U.S. business leaders by CV writing platform ResumeTemplates found 42 percent of respondents admitted to having used those quiet-firing strategies this year, with an additional 11 percent saying they plan to do so in coming months.
The main reason that total of 53 percent of participants said they’d employed the stratagem was to avoid severance, legal, and other costs that layoffs usually generate. They also credited the ruse with averting the bad blood and even worse reputational damage that firing people can create.
In addition to establishing that a small majority of employers have or intend to resort to quiet firing this year, the survey also identified the most common methods that managers use to passively push workers toward the door.
Delaying promised raises topped the list, with 47 percent of participants citing the tactic. That compared with 46 percent of respondents who said they’d tightened RTO or other workplace rules, 45 percent who increased workloads without compensation, and 32 percent who cut wages or benefits to sour employees on their jobs. Micromanaging workers — or, inversely, cutting them out of projects and consultations entirely — was another method mentioned, as was ignoring toxic environments that undermine the well-being of people designated for departure.
The scenarios for which the passive maneuver to lower head count was used varied. Around 41 percent of participating managers said they’d deployed it against specific employees they’d deemed troublesome, problematic, or simply unwanted. That included 47 percent of respondents who said they’d embraced quiet firing to get rid of underperforming employees, and 41 percent who’d used it with staff who complained about or resisted strengthened RTO rules.
Just over a third of participants said the method allowed them to sidestep severance payments that often accompany formal layoffs, with an equal 34 percent crediting it with lowering the attendant legal headaches. Around 32 percent said the passively manipulative approach allowed them to avoid the bad external publicity that can arise when businesses cut staff.
But company owners and executives who answered the survey also noted there were broader economic and business reasons that made lowering head count necessary. In many cases, quiet firing was ultimately selected as the means to achieve that.
The most frequently cited of those external pressures was slowing revenue and sales, at 50 percent. Adjusting to increased costs from import tariffs was second, at 46 percent. Nearly 40 percent of participants said staff reductions had already been or will be made this year in anticipation of a recession, and the same percentage pointed to wage inflation as a factor in cuts.
But in spite of the frequent and increasing recourse to quiet firing, its results received mixed reviews from survey respondents. A whopping 85 percent of participants called it a somewhat or very effective way of influencing employees to leave with lower costs and legal hassles. But 98 percent of respondents acknowledged the technique also had a negative effect on workplace morale, with nearly 40 percent describing that erosion as considerable.
For that reason alone, Julia Toothacre, ResumeTemplates’ chief career strategist, warned that quiet firing is a double-edged sword employers should think entirely through before using.
“From a business perspective, quiet firing can seem like an efficient way to reduce head count without triggering layoffs, bad press, or severance costs,” Toothacre said in comments about the survey’s results. “But it’s shortsighted. Creating an environment that pushes people to quit inevitably damages morale, productivity, and trust. It can also negatively impact hiring in the future. And let’s be honest, when this tactic is applied broadly, companies risk losing high performers, not just underperformers.”
Another possible result is businesses not losing anyone at all. Survey respondents reported that employees targeted by quiet firing don’t always quit as hoped — especially in an increasingly challenging labor market.
Indeed, 77 percent of participants said some of their quiet-firing efforts had failed when workers decided that finding a new job elsewhere would be more arduous than roughing it out where they were. One reason for that fatalism, 53 percent of responding managers said in their rather depressing view of the modern workforce, is that a large number of current “workers simply tolerate poor treatment rather than quitting.”
That may wind up leaving manipulating executives with more than they bargained for. Because refusals of targeted employees to quit can have potentially negative consequences for the workplaces they remain in — and the employers who wanted them gone.
“Many workers will stick it out right now not because they’re engaged, but because the job market feels uncertain,” Toothacre said. “They’re weighing the stress of a toxic workplace against the risk of landing a new job that pays less. This calculator puts employees in survival mode, which will ultimately impact productivity.”
In other words, although quiet firing is spreading among businesses, its lower costs and confrontations up front may well be offset by lower workplace happiness and productivity over time.
— By Bruce Crumley
This article originally appeared on Fast Company‘s sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
