Article #61: Quiet Firing
The process of creating a hostile work environment by an employer in the hopes that it will cause an employee to quit is called Quiet Firing.
Just as the name suggests, did you know that Quiet Firing happens every now and then quietly? Why do you think it happens in the first place? Do we have any better solutions rather than quiet firing? Well, let’s find out in our episode today with a fictitious story.
Once upon a time there was a software engineer called Ramu who is smart, talented, brilliant, helpful but very soft, sensitive and innocent by nature. Ramu was always given loads of work which he used to do without any complaints. His team mates also used to share their work with Ramu secretly. Being a helpful and innocent person by nature, Ramu used to do everything that comes his way.
3 years passed by, people moved from here and there except Ramu. His management understood that in the worst-case scenario, we have a scapegoat ready who could never speak for himself as he is calm and innocent by nature.
Days passed by and one fine day, Ramu got to know that he wasn’t marked in one of the important email communications. He was surprised for a while, but then thought that his manager would have forgotten to add him. After two days, by the time Ramu returned from lunch, there was no one from his team in the work zone. He tried calling his colleagues, but in vain. After an hour, when they returned, he was again surprised that there happened a team meeting without him, that too at the stage of important decision making for the project. He tried to talk to his manager, but his manager kept ignoring him. Ramu was alarmed.
Before he could digest what started happening, he realized that there were no goals set for him that year and neither he received any feedback nor any appreciation for his work since last 3 months. In fact, there was no discussion happened about his career trajectory.
The very next day, he was assigned a tough project to work on. Although he started working, the change in the work environment affected him. Somewhere, he felt it to be toxic. It even impacted his personal life. He couldn’t sleep properly with all these thoughts.
In the meantime, there came a major blow. Instead of getting promoted for his hard work, he was demoted, his salary got decreased. Ramu was shocked, tears started flowing from his eyes, he became quite upset, lost his mental balance because on the personal front, he was having a home loan, sister marriage and other expenses to meet. He couldn’t share it with anyone because obviously people would judge him simply by thinking that he underperformed at his job which was not true. In fact, he couldn’t even share it with his family because it was a wedding house and he would never want to be the spoiler for the happiness.
Ramu kept everything within him for few days. Being a sensitive person, Sometimes, he used to feel that it’s the end of the life. He wanted to shout, cry, die and what not, he became a man of overloaded emotions. He tried reaching out to the HR, but received a simple response that only managers would assess his performance and being a HR, she couldn’t do anything about it. Since Ramu had only 3 years of experience, he wasn’t aware of any other company policies like Grievance Management.
After becoming helpless with the closed doors from all sides, Ramu went into depression.
His Roommate noticed a lot of change in Ramu. He couldn’t find the cheerful, smiling, happy, active Ramu since a while. Although Ramu tried to cover up everything even after being asked multiple times, his roommate didn’t give up. He kept asking Ramu multiple times and genuinely came forward to help him. Finally, Ramu opened up on everything to his roommate.
His roommate termed it as Quiet Firing. He told Ramu that leaving such workplace is the only option left with him. He encouraged Ramu to look for other opportunities and ultimately, made him resign.
Ramu, who got attached to his workplace personally felt very hard to leave, but still he made a move. The new organization received Ramu well and he started enjoying so many benefits with respect to the work culture and even pay unlike before.
After a year unexpectedly, he happened to meet his previous manager outside. Ramu became quite strong, matured and emotionally intelligent in this span. He asked his previous manager to give honest response for quiet firing him. Then he understood that as per the company top management directives, in order to implement the cost cutting and earn better profits for the company, they had to quiet fire some employees particularly the ones who could never speak out for themselves irrespective of their performance.
Ramu gave a smile towards his previous manager and moved on. He felt happy that Quiet Firing enabled him to evolve as a strong and emotionally intelligent person.
Coming out of the story, did you know that there has been a 24% increase in online search since last year for how to fire someone?
Maybe, you wouldn’t believe if I say that there has been a 180% increase in online search since last year for when to fire someone.
Basically, let’s understand why Quiet Firing
Saving Severance Pay
Incapable manager coaching a team
Uncomfortable with Firing
Employee’s attitude problems
Employee’s underperformance
Talking about the solutions for Employees
Speak to Manager and above all levels although they try to ignore
No need to stay at Toxic workplace
Upskill yourself & Find Better Opportunities
Solutions For Employers
Always discuss rather than demoralize
Proper heads up once or twice could set the things right
Find other areas of cost cutting rather than quiet firing an employee
So, don’t you think we need to eliminate this issue of Quiet Firing by arriving at some amicable solution because Quiet Firing can harness the self-respect and self-confidence of an employee which is not a positive sign for the growth of an individual and also the society.
What do you say? Let me know in the comments below.
Comments
Post a Comment