Quiet Firing

What Is Quiet Firing?

Quiet firing is a new term for an old workplace phenomenon: neglecting employees or deliberately pushing them to quit rather than firing them outright. Quiet firing can be overt—to encourage the employee to quit—or it can be the unintended result of bad management.

Some quiet firing examples include:

• Setting unattainable performance goals for an employee.
• Denying them development opportunities or a chance at a promotion.
• Withholding well-deserved recognition, or purposefully underutilizing their skills.

In some cases, managers may pile on an unreasonable workload or diminish the employee’s role without offering an explanation for the shift.

Many managers who participate in quiet firing do so to avoid the financial, legal, and emotional repercussions of deliberately terminating an employee. The idea is that the company won’t need to worry about severance pay, regulatory compliance violations, or tense performance review meetings if the employee simply quits on their own. But the risk of increasing attrition rates makes it a challenging balancing act.

What’s Driving the Quiet Firing Trend?

The recent trend puts a new spin on an old management problem, with 80% of respondents to a recent poll claiming to have faced or witnessed quiet firing. From the Great Resignation in 2021 to the rise of quiet quitting to the challenges of an increasingly digital workplace, it can be tricky to pin down an exact cause of quiet firing.

Quiet Quitting

Quiet quitting is when employees actively disengage from their roles by refusing to do more than the bare minimum required to keep their jobs. Unfortunately, this trend often goes hand-in-hand with quiet firing.

Quiet quitting can be a response to or a reflection of a manager’s attempt at quiet firing. ‌What’s quiet firing if not a way to avoid the conflict and uncomfortable feelings of having to terminate someone whose work isn’t up to par?

Poor Management

Poor management can be intentional or unintentional. Sometimes, a manager purposely tries to frustrate an employee to encourage them to leave on their own. Still, poor management can be completely unintentional (due to a manager’s lack of training or awareness) and still lead to quiet firing.

Managers who chronically underuse key skill sets, are unable to properly balance employee workloads, or otherwise create unfavorable working conditions can easily drive out their employees. In fact, poor management is one of the leading causes of quiet quitting

Digital Transformation

The modern workplace is regularly changing, and often becoming more digital in the process. In some cases (especially when it comes to remote work), this has had the unintended effect of sidelining face-to-face communication and the high level of connection and engagement that often comes with it.

As a result, employees can feel isolated, and important conversations about performance and advancement can fall by the wayside. Additionally, written communication through messaging apps can lead to misunderstandings and a misinterpretation of someone’s tone. All of these issues can lead to perceived hostility that eventually moves an employee to resign.

Termination Costs

Outright terminating employees can be costly. In addition to the possibility of having to fork over severance pay, you also run the risk of being sued or having complaints filed against your company with the EEOC or other regulatory organizations.

Terminations can also have an effect on your brand. Employers can lose out on top talent when candidates know they’re quick to fire employees. Some managers might see quiet firing as a way to avoid this negative perception.

Is Quiet Firing Illegal?

On the surface, quiet firing isn’t against the law. But because it often involves making an employee uncomfortable enough to leave on their own, employees may feel they’re being retaliated against, wrongfully terminated, or harassed.

Retaliation

Attempting to get employees to leave on their own can easily look like retaliation. Employees are protected from retaliation for things like reporting harassment or discrimination or using leave granted to them under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Discrimination

If an employee’s performance issues are due to a disability for which they require an accommodation you haven’t provided, quiet firing can make employers vulnerable to labor and anti-discrimination law violations, which can result in hefty fines and penalties.

Constructive Discharge

Quiet firing can also lead to charges of constructive discharge, or forcing a reasonable employee to resign due to intolerable working conditions. This situation often arises from significant changes in working terms and conditions (also often associated with quiet firing).

What constitutes constructive discharge can vary according to state laws, but it can be considered a form of wrongful termination and can lead to lawsuits. Employers found guilty of this can be required to compensate the employee with front and back pay, benefits, attorney fees, and even compensation for pain and suffering.

How Quiet Firing Can Impact a Company

Though the lack of confrontation may seem like an easier way out than the official firing process, quiet firing can land employers in hot water. It’s not just legally questionable; it can impact your employees, workplace community, and company culture as well.

Culture of Conflict

Quiet firing can lead to feelings of resentment and may even create conflict in the workplace. If managers are passing qualified employees over for promotions or reassigning key responsibilities to others on the team, this can keep suspicions high and create feelings of mistrust that make it hard for teams to collaborate and build relationships.

Missed Growth Opportunities

If a manager is purposely not using an employee’s full skill set in an effort to get them to leave the company, it’s not just the employee who suffers—the company could be missing out.

Issues Recruiting and Retaining Top Talent

About 80% of Gen Z graduates, who increasingly make up a significant portion of the workforce, are worried about burnout in their professional careers. Many of them value job stability and financial security. Unfortunately, quiet firing can tarnish an employer’s reputation as a sustainable place to work.

If candidates know that there’s a possibility they will be overloaded with work or pushed out of the job, they may be less likely to apply or accept a job offer. This can mean that roles go unfilled, negatively impacting productivity, performance, and profit.

This instability can also permeate the current workforce, causing high turnover if employees feel they’re better off leaving for a different (and more predictable) employer.

Decreased Morale and Engagement

Having to endure a negative workplace environment every day can lead to a downturn in employee morale beyond just the employee who is being targeted for quiet firing. All employees will likely feel the effects of hostility, especially if they’re getting privileges and support that another employee is being denied.

Research has found that 70% of the variance in engagement between highly engaged and disengaged teams is due to the quality of the manager.

How to Avoid Quiet Firing

Managers and HR leaders should realize that there are alternatives to participating in the quiet firing trend:

• Prioritize open communication: Ensure that managers and employees trust each other enough to provide honest feedback
• Train managers well: Ensure managers do their jobs well, provide employees with support, and know how to handle difficult conversations about performance.
• Solicit employee feedback: Use exit interviews and surveys to ask employees about their experiences and discuss ways the company can do better
• Build a positive culture: Create a culture of trust and positivity to combat quiet firing attempts by rogue managers.
• Consider moving employees: Consider moving employees if they aren’t the right fit for a particular manager or team
• Remove problem managers fast: Bad managers are the source of quiet firing. Remove them quickly to ensure teams don’t suffer.

Knowing what quiet firing is and how to identify it can help HR leaders and managers stop it from happening under their watch, while creating an engaged and high-performing workforce.