Oct. 8, 2022 "You've heard of quiet quitting. Here's how to tell if you're being quietly fired": Today I found this article by Brandie Weikle on CBC:
Looking back, says MaryAnn Kerr, it was a work call at home on a day off that heralded the beginning of the end of a job.
About five years ago, Kerr, a veteran executive in the non-profit sector, landed a sweet gig as vice-president of a charity she loved. Roughly three or four months into it, her boss was calling her at home, angry about something seemingly innocuous Kerr had said during an earlier phone meeting.
"It was over something that made no sense at all…. They thought I was overstepping, that this was not appropriate for me to say."
That began what she describes as "a campaign to undermine" her by a CEO who seemed to believe Kerr was after their job.
"I was being excluded from meetings that I needed to attend in order to effectively do my job.
Information was being withheld from me that I needed to do my job," Kerr told CBC Radio's The Cost of Living.
Much attention has been paid recently to the idea of "quiet quitting," when employees remain in their jobs but stick to the bare requirements of the role in order to avoid burnout.
A phenomenon called "quiet firing" can have the opposite effect — when employers subtly compel staff members to leave their jobs to avoid the messy business of firing them.
"I have heard the term quiet firing used in different countries or in different contexts, where … the employers make the workplace such a difficult environment that the employee feels that they have no choice but to leave,"
said Nita Chhinzer, associate professor of human resources at the University of Guelph's Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics.
"So the employee may be overlooked for promotion,
or their hours may be reduced,
or they may suddenly no longer be scheduled."
'A combination of being isolated and mobbed'
In Kerr's case, the boss would tell her that her colleagues didn't like her,
and micromanage the way she handled her own direct reports.
The boss would tell her to hold weekly meetings with her team, said Kerr,
but also subvert her authority with them.
"And [the team] literally ignored my emails. They would not meet with me. So it's a combination of being isolated and mobbed, to a certain extent."
Other times, the CEO would be combative with her in front of others at meetings, said Kerr, "almost like a fighting match to kind of poke at me."
"I even had an episode at a public event where they shoved me out of the way to get to a photo opportunity."
Kerr's experience tracks with other cases like it, said Chhinzer. It's fairly common in cases like this for the boss to make the employee in question an "outgroup member."
"So they don't get invited to meetings, they don't get invited to the lunches," said Chhinzer.
"When there's developmental opportunities, they get overlooked for those."
Workers can be even more vulnerable to quiet firing outside of office jobs.
"In some of the high-turnover industries, like
restaurants,
grocery stores
and retail,
there's a very high likelihood that people just simply get scheduled out
or they have their hours reduced," said Chhinzer.
More vulnerable workers less likely to sue
When workers don't have guaranteed hours, it makes them much more vulnerable to quiet firing, she said.
"Without a guaranteed number of hours, these people are often just put on minimal shifts,
so they're forced to find a secondary form of employment in order to actually sustain themselves."
These kinds of cases can fall under what's known under Canadian employment law as constructive dismissal — giving workers grounds to seek financial compensation for being pushed out of their jobs.
But people who work in grocery stores, for example, are not likely to have the financial resources to take legal action against their employer, said Chhinzer.
Determining whether your case of quiet firing would be considered constructive dismissal under the law comes down to a couple of key distinctions, said employment lawyer Hermie Abraham, who runs a Toronto firm called Advocation Employment Law.
"Quiet firing can kind of fall into two buckets.
There could be the quiet firing where the employer is just disengaged with an employee,"
said Abraham, who became a lawyer after an earlier career in human resources.
This type of quiet firing may not be legally actionable as a dismissal, she said, "but the employee is sort of being put out to pasture. [The employer is] not investing in them."
The other type is when employers purposely do things to push somebody out — such as
changing compensation
or demoting them from manager to individual contributor.
"In law, that's considered constructive dismissal, and there are remedies for the employee," Abraham said.
Take the example of somebody who is working in a restaurant.
"Let's say somebody was working a shift that was a really good shift, and they're getting lots of tips," said Abraham.
"All of a sudden, now they're being moved to a time where maybe they're getting the same hours, but they're not getting the same tips — that could [fall into the] category of constructive dismissal,
because of the fact that there's a fundamental change to a key part of their employment, which is their remuneration."
Getting help
MaryAnn Kerr was eventually let go, and can't discuss the terms of her departure. But she has advice for those who find themselves in a similar situation.
"I think it's important to talk to HR, because that's about protecting yourself," she said.
Same with keeping notes — Kerr said detailed journals proved useful in her case.
"And then it's important to talk to a trusted adviser outside of the organization.
Tell them what's happening and ask them what they think."
If workers think they have a legal case, Abraham says they should seek the advice of an employment lawyer.
If a case is the more subtle kind, where they're being overlooked for opportunity, she suggests writing to the boss.
An employee can outline the factors that have been getting in the way of their success at work, and suggest some solutions, says Abraham.
"Just sort of languishing and being miserable at work, it's not a thing to do," she said.
"Life is way too short to do that."
You've heard of quiet quitting. Here's how to tell if you're being quietly fired | CBC Radio
Oct. 25, 2022 "The quiet quitters are getting quiet fired: The silent war playing out in offices": Today I found this article by Victoria Wells on the Financial Post:
You’ve probably heard of quiet quitting, in which workers refuse to do much more than meet the expectations laid out in their job descriptions. That sounds reasonable enough to most employees — and many have argued the term simply means doing your job — but bosses haven’t been too pleased about it.
Managers are agonizing over what an office full of quiet quitters means for productivity, and for some that’s translated into taking on a portion of their employees’ workloads to make up the loss.
Four out of 10 managers in Toronto say they’re putting in extra time and effort because staff under the age of 30 are doing less, according to a recent poll conducted by recruiter Robert Walters Canada.
The young professionals pulling back at work say it’s mostly because they aren’t paid enough.
As high inflation and the rising cost of living take a bite out of paycheques, many employees assume their employers can and should make up the difference with a hefty raise.
But that’s just a pipe dream. Most companies would find it impossible to match the rate of inflation, which came in at 6.9 per cent in September, with wage hikes.
As a result, we’re witnessing a silent war play out between employees and their managers, some of whom are fighting back in their own passive-aggressive way by “quiet firing” the quiet quitters.
Quiet firing subtly freezes out an employee by either
avoiding one-on-one conversations,
refusing to provide feedback,
neglecting to share critical information needed to do a job,
passing them over for a promotion
or subjecting them to stingy raises
— or no raise at all —
while co-workers are awarded more.
That may sound pretty extreme, but the practice appears to be more common than you’d think. Most workers say they’ve either experienced it or seen it play out in their workplace, says a recent poll by LinkedIn News.
Meanwhile, one in three managers in the United States say they’ve actually gone the “quiet firing” route, according to a poll by Resumebuilder.com.
The effect can be demoralizing for an employee, which is exactly the point.
“Eventually, you’ll either feel so
incompetent,
isolated
and unappreciated
that you’ll go find a new job,
and they never have to deal with a development plan
or offer severance,”
says Bonnie Dilper, a recruiter for work software company Zapier Inc., in a LinkedIn post.
Even if quiet quitters aren’t on the quiet firing line, they are more likely to end up on the chopping block anyway.
Three-quarters of managers think it’s OK to fire staffers who aren’t putting their all into their jobs, Resumebuilder.com’s poll says.
Workers putting in the bare minimum might want to take that to heart if they plan on keeping their jobs through a recession and possible layoffs.
“(Quiet quitting) will simply make it easier to determine whose head is going to roll,” warn employment lawyers Howard Levitt and Peter Carey.
This “quiet” war could be a direct consequence of working from home.
Remote work seems to have broken something fundamental in the employee-employer relationship: good communication.
A large swathe of the workforce appears to have forgotten how to speak to one another, and even approaching a co-worker for a quick conversation during in-office days has become frowned upon.
There’s another buzzword for that: “desk bombing.” For some, getting unexpectedly greeted by a colleague has become as anxiety-ridden as having to talk to someone by phone.
Meanwhile, managers say remote and hybrid work has made it very easy for employees to fly under the radar,
and working from home is a “breeding ground” for quiet quitters, according to Robert Walters Canada.
But the recruiter says the solution is simple enough: bring people back into the office more often.
“If quiet quitters are benefiting from being ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ then employers should not hesitate to make more office face-time mandatory,” Martin Fox, managing director at Robert Walters Canada, says in a news release.
Employees continue to push back on being in the office more often, but the extra face-to-face communication time could help smooth out the expectations of both employers and employees as far as work effort goes.
And then the quiet quitters won’t have to worry about being quiet fired.
• Email: vwells@postmedia.com | Twitter: vwells80
Quiet quitters are getting quiet fired in silent workplace war | Financial Post
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While this is an older article now there is an interesting phenomenon occurring in the job markets, at least in Ottawa. Many companies, particularly American, have been poaching Ottawa tech employees singing the praises of flex work from home. Now that the economy is showing signs of strain these people are getting their pink slips as they were never really part of the new company -- more like a remote freelancer. My company lost 4 S/W developers to these US-based companies with the big promises. As of today 3 of the 4 have been laid off by their new distant employers.
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