Why employers need to clamp down on quiet firing

Doing the bare min­i­mum to get by at work has gone glob­al, but it’s not only employ­ees who are guilty of dis­en­gag­ing. While so-called qui­et quit­ting has attract­ed much media atten­tion in recent months, anoth­er phe­nom­e­non, qui­et fir­ing, has reared its ugly head too.

Qui­et fir­ing is a way of nudg­ing an employ­ee out of a com­pa­ny using a set of pas­sive-aggres­sive man­age­ment tech­niques to dis­en­gage from them in the hope that they will become dis­af­fect­ed enough to leave of their own accord.

The usu­al ratio­nale for such an approach is that the indi­vid­ual is under­per­form­ing or sim­ply isn’t ‘a good fit’ for the organ­i­sa­tion. Rather than cre­ate con­flict and upset the apple cart, the employee’s man­ag­er will sim­ply with­draw from the rela­tion­ship. They may stop invit­ing the employ­ee to key meet­ings and copy­ing them into impor­tant emails, for instance. Oth­er com­mon tac­tics include assign­ing them a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult, demand­ing client or going the oth­er way and giv­ing them a lot of menial work. Deny­ing the vic­tim oppor­tu­ni­ties to advance their career in the organ­i­sa­tion is anoth­er typ­i­cal move. 

The end goal is always the same: to frus­trate the employ­ee and make them realise that they would be bet­ter off work­ing for anoth­er, more appre­cia­tive, organ­i­sa­tion. 

Passive-aggressive management is on the rise

Qui­et fir­ing is by no means a new phe­nom­e­non. Man­agers have applied its dark arts for decades, but the emerg­ing debate about the ‘always-on’ work cul­ture has thrust the prac­tice into the spot­light for crit­i­cism. 

With many British busi­ness­es seek­ing to slash costs as the econ­o­my fal­ters, an upsurge in cas­es of qui­et fir­ing is like­ly. Employ­ers may be look­ing for an excuse to nudge peo­ple out with­out hav­ing to stump up for sev­er­ance pack­ages. 

Khy­ati Sun­daram is CEO of Applied, an eth­i­cal recruit­ment plat­form whose clients have includ­ed the Eng­land and Wales Crick­et Board, Com­ic Relief and Pen­guin Ran­dom House. She is in no doubt that qui­et fir­ing is “being fuelled by the uncer­tain eco­nom­ic cli­mate. For man­agers under pres­sure to make cuts, freez­ing employ­ees out might offer a con­ve­nient alter­na­tive to hav­ing uncom­fort­able con­ver­sa­tions.”

There’s plen­ty of research evi­dence indi­cat­ing that man­age­r­i­al behav­iour can affect employ­ee turnover, notes Dr Jaclyn Menen­dez, con­sult­ing man­ag­er at HR ser­vice provider Tal­o­gy. 

“What’s inter­est­ing is the idea that man­agers may be weapon­is­ing this influ­ence to ensure that cer­tain employ­ees quit,” she says. “This is def­i­nite­ly a new the­o­ry, but one that seems to be gain­ing sup­port.”

LinkedIn News con­duct­ed a sur­vey in August to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the preva­lence of qui­et fir­ing. It found that 48% of 20,000 respon­dents had wit­nessed the prac­tice, while 35% had expe­ri­enced it. 

As many as 13% of respon­dents didn’t believe that the phe­nom­e­non exist­ed, which comes as no sur­prise to Menen­dez. As its name sug­gests, qui­et fir­ing is often a sub­tle process, she says, so it can go unde­tect­ed by those who aren’t being tar­get­ed. 

Con­sid­er favouritism and the for­ma­tion of cliques. While an employ­ee who finds them­selves out­side the cir­cle might assume that it was some­thing they said or did that alien­at­ed their col­leagues, being exclud­ed could actu­al­ly be an ear­ly warn­ing sign that a qui­et fir­ing is in progress, Menen­dez says.

The prob­lem for that indi­vid­ual is that they can’t assume that they’re being treat­ed unfair­ly, because they might be under­per­form­ing and/or hard to man­age after all. On top of this, the deci­sion to nudge them out may have been made by the HR depart­ment and the mat­ter could already be out of their man­ager’s hands.

Eliminating opportunities for quiet firing

When peo­ple do detect that a col­league is being qui­et­ly fired, it does lit­tle for their engage­ment lev­els, espe­cial­ly when they con­sid­er that they might be on the receiv­ing end next if their firm is seek­ing to slash its employ­ment costs. 

How can employ­ers avoid engag­ing in this unhealthy prac­tice? First, they may need to rethink their approach to recruit­ment, so that employ­ees are less like­ly to under­per­form in the first place. So says Han­nah Copeland, HR busi­ness part­ner at employ­ment law con­sul­tan­cy Work­Nest.

“Poor organ­i­sa­tion­al design and devel­op­ment poten­tial­ly cause busi­ness­es to cre­ate the wrong roles. They then neglect the post-hold­ers’ devel­op­ment because such roles become easy to side­line,” she sug­gests. 

For this rea­son, employ­ers need to improve edu­ca­tion about diver­si­ty, equal­i­ty and inclu­sion, while ensur­ing that there are equal oppor­tu­ni­ties for train­ing and devel­op­ment. Imple­ment­ing trans­par­ent access to per­for­mance reviews and pro­mo­tions would be a good place to start, Sun­daram sug­gests.

“Since ingrained bias­es can’t be erad­i­cat­ed com­plete­ly, employ­ers should look to elim­i­nate oppor­tu­ni­ties for these to show up,” she says.

Such bias­es caused peo­ple from eth­nic minori­ties to be far more like­ly to lose their jobs when firms were slash­ing over­heads dur­ing the ear­ly stages of the Covid cri­sis. “These risk push­ing mar­gin­alised groups to the front of the qui­et fir­ing line again in the face of a reces­sion,” Sun­daram adds.

Employ­ers should also watch for signs of man­age­r­i­al burnout, Menen­dez warns. Man­agers under extreme pres­sure to hit tar­gets may have nei­ther the time nor the patience to deal prop­er­ly with dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions involv­ing their staff and may resort to qui­et fir­ing as a rel­a­tive­ly has­sle-free option. 

The importance of culture

Rather than using pas­sive-aggres­sive tac­tics and hop­ing that employ­ees get the mes­sage, man­agers should adopt a more grown-up approach, she says. 

First, they need to ask them­selves why they don’t feel com­fort­able hav­ing hon­est con­ver­sa­tions with the employ­ee in ques­tion. If there are prob­lems with the qual­i­ty of their work, for instance, these need to be han­dled in a direct and con­struc­tive way. This should involve set­ting real­is­tic goals, hold­ing reg­u­lar per­for­mance-review meet­ings and offer­ing prop­er sup­port and guid­ance. 

These meet­ings should also be a chance for the employ­ee to share any con­cerns they may have. Both par­ties can then work togeth­er to seek a mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry solu­tion, such a change of role in the organ­i­sa­tion.

“It’s only by under­stand­ing what’s dri­ving qui­et fir­ing in your com­pa­ny that you can build effec­tive strate­gies to com­bat it,” says John Back­house, head of peo­ple sci­ence at Work­Buzz, a spe­cial­ist in employ­ee engage­ment.

What’s more, the ben­e­fit of devel­op­ing a work­place where employ­ees feel com­fort­able approach­ing their man­agers and being open with them leads to a health­i­er cul­ture in which there is nei­ther qui­et fir­ing nor qui­et quit­ting, he adds. 

Copeland agrees. The two trends feed one anoth­er in a self-per­pet­u­at­ing vicious cir­cle. A healthy cul­ture of open­ness lim­its the amount of ammu­ni­tion an employ­er might have at their dis­pos­al to nudge an employ­ee out of the door.  

“Good cul­ture breeds the right prac­tices and behav­iour,” she says. “Build­ing a high-per­for­mance cul­ture means that qui­et fir­ing won’t arise because the sys­tems, poli­cies and process­es in the busi­ness won’t enable it.”

Doing the bare minimum to get by at work has gone global, but it’s not only employees who are guilty of disengaging. While so-called quiet quitting has attracted much media attention in recent months, another phenomenon, quiet firing, has reared its ugly head too.

Quiet firing is a way of nudging an employee out of a company using a set of passive-aggressive management techniques to disengage from them in the hope that they will become disaffected enough to leave of their own accord.

The usual rationale for such an approach is that the individual is underperforming or simply isn’t ‘a good fit’ for the organisation. Rather than create conflict and upset the apple cart, the employee’s manager will simply withdraw from the relationship. They may stop inviting the employee to key meetings and copying them into important emails, for instance. Other common tactics include assigning them a particularly difficult, demanding client or going the other way and giving them a lot of menial work. Denying the victim opportunities to advance their career in the organisation is another typical move.