Quiet quitting (basically, doing the absolute minimum a job requires) by employees was a concerning trend throughout 2024 and into early 2025. That’s now been replaced by “quiet firing,” where managers use fear and indifference to push employees out the door without formal termination or layoffs.
A growing number of companies are embracing or at least tolerating this passive but toxic, avoidance-based management tactic to reduce headcount without incurring severance costs or involving HR. This behavior is a sign of bad leadership, rooted in fear, unclear expectations, and a lack of feedback.
This post will describe how quiet firing works, how to recognize it, why some managers are engaging in this deplorable tactic, the negative impacts of quiet firing, and what effective leaders (and those who aspire to become great leaders) are doing instead.
What Is Quiet Firing and How Can You Recognize It?
Quiet firing is the strategic neglect or sidelining of employees without formal termination. It is “the act of intentionally creating an unfavorable work environment to compel employees to leave their jobs rather than formally firing them or issuing layoffs.”1
Common tactics include delaying raises, increasing the number of days employees need to work in the office, and implying that layoffs may be imminent.
A lack of transparency and honest communications defines this practice. Unlike putting an employee on a performance improvement plan (PIP) or moving them into a new role (where there is open communication and the employee is involved in the process), quiet firing relies on instilling fear, uncertainty, and doubt about their futures into the minds of employees in the hope they will voluntarily leave the organization.
The Rise of Quiet Firing: Why It’s Gaining Attention
This isn’t, unfortunately, an unusual or fringe management practice. According to a recent survey, 53% of companies are using quiet firing as a means to push employees out.1 The main reason so many firms say they had “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.”2
Quiet firing actually encourages disengagement by employees, exhibited in trends like quiet quitting, “quiet cracking” (defined as employees “situated somewhere between burnout and quiet quitting…mired in feeling both unappreciated by managers and closed off from career advancement”3), burnout, complacency, and eventual voluntary departure.
This odious management behavior has been accelerated across industries by a confluence of factors, including recession worries, return-to-office (RTO) mandates, tariffs, and the uncertain impact of AI in the workplace.
Signs an Employee Is Being Silently Pushed Out
Has quiet firing become a common practice in your workplace? Common signs that management is trying to push employees out of the workplace voluntarily include:
- Reducing employee responsibilities
- Excluding employees from meetings
- Offering only vague (if any) feedback
- Micromanaging employees
- Ignoring toxic workplace behavior
- Reinforcing or extending RTO mandates
- Cutting benefits
- Increasing workloads
- Delaying pay increases
- Gradually isolating target employees in the workplace until they resign.2
Keep in mind these signs often accumulate subtly over time rather than all at once. Some of these behaviors may even be unintentional, signs of a manager who doesn’t know how to avoid being a bad boss, rather than elements of a calculated quiet firing strategy. However, they are still detrimental to engagement, productivity, and retention if left unchecked.
Why Some Managers Resort to Avoidance Tactics
If quiet firing is an abhorrent management strategy (and it is), why do some companies and individual managers embrace it? At the organizational level, quiet firing may be encouraged out of a belief that it “works” at some level, enabling the business to “trim staff without having to make severance payouts or as a way to tamp down negative press or public perceptions associated with layoffs.”1
“Despite the potential consequences for employee morale, 85% of respondents said quiet firing has been at least a somewhat effective tactic.”1
Individual managers will adopt quiet firing as a strategy if senior management directs them to do so, or at least indicates they will tolerate it. It may also be part of the culture; middle managers who experience fear-based management are more likely to use the same approach. Adoption of these harmful practices may also be supported by factors like:
- Fear of conflict: Having an honest and open conversation with an employee to address their performance issues can be a challenging and uncomfortable experience. What if they push back or get demotivated, performing even worse? Quiet firing can seem like the easier path. Fortunately, Conflict Resolution Training can address this fear by teaching proven methods for handling disagreements with respect and professionalism.
- Fear of mistakes: Managers may avoid providing feedback or empowering employees due to fear of making mistakes.5
- Lack of training: Leaders may not fully understand the potential negative impacts of avoidance tactics due to inadequate training. Emotional Intelligence Training helps managers develop greater self-awareness and empathy, thereby enhancing their ability to communicate honestly and openly.
- Underdeveloped feedback skills: Leaders may also underappreciate the potential positive impacts of effective coaching, guidance, and mentoring. Again, professional development training can help managers, especially those relatively new to the role, learn and become comfortable with the skills necessary to provide practical performance feedback.
- Weak HR oversight: When managers don’t see HR as a partner in building a high-performance workforce, they may find it easier to push employees to leave on their own than to get HR involved in a PIP or formal termination action.
One final and somewhat surprising reason that aggressive, antagonistic managers who practice fear-based leadership continue to be employed is that some employees actually admire that approach. According to a recent research study from the Columbia Business School:
“Individuals who see society as a ruthless, Darwinian competition, a competitive worldview, are more likely to admire antagonistic leaders, interpreting their behavior as evidence of competence and effectiveness… Even though most people prefer warm, supportive leaders, antagonistic leaders can endure by attracting followers whose competitive worldviews are supportive of their own behavioral style.”6
The Negative Impacts of Quiet Firing on Teams and Culture
For the targeted employee, the effects of quiet firing can be devastating, although the intent is often to make the person so miserable at work that they leave. That in itself is cruel, but the impacts typically don’t stop with that individual worker; they ripple beyond the targeted employee, impacting team dynamics and organizational performance.
Here are seven ways quiet firing can do short- and long-term business damage.
1. Lower Morale
While quiet firing as a tactic to reduce headcount “can be effective, it has a negative impact on employee morale.”1 Even workers not directly affected are likely to be put off and alienated by the practice.
2. Broken Trust
In high-performing organizations, employees trust leaders to communicate openly, honestly, directly, and transparently. When managers try to push employees out by doing the opposite, it destroys trust.
3. Reduced Productivity
“Many workers will stick it out right now not because they’re engaged, but because the job market feels uncertain. 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.”1
Quiet firing reduces employee engagement, and “Disengaged employees are a huge threat in multiple ways. They do the bare minimum work: studies show disengaged employees are 18% less productive on average.”7
4. Damaged Psychological Safety
Managing through fear destroys employees’ sense of psychological safety, creating a toxic work environment. “Managing through fear has a bad track record, decades of research shows. Scaring employees could inspire them to action. But there are ‘toxic effects over the long run.’ It can stifle creativity, inhibit collaboration, and lead to burnout.”4
5. Degraded Customer Experience
The disengagement caused by managing through fear “isn’t contained, it leaks, and disengaged employees are likely to lower service quality, slow response times, and diminish brand loyalty.”7
6. Less Innovation and Creativity
“Disengaged employees also kill innovation, problem-solving, and transformation. They don’t speak up, challenge ideas, or contribute proactively…You lose not just output, but the critical energy that drives adaptation and progress.”7
7. Brand Damage
Long gone are the days when the opinions and feelings of disgruntled employees were shared only with coworkers and close friends. Today, employees aren’t shy about sharing stories of fear-based management with the world on TikTok, Glassdoor, and other channels. These posts can go viral, damaging the company’s image and brand not only among prospective employees but also among influencers and consumers.
Finally, managing through fear encourages employees to leave – not just those employees targeted by quiet firing tactics, but also the most valuable (and hence most mobile) talent.
“Disengaged employees are 2.6 times more likely to actively seek a new job, creating costly churn…’ Disengaged workforce’ is a term that gets thrown around a lot by people functions, and too often it’s dismissed by leadership as HR fluff. But when you connect it to hard facts, it really is like death by a thousand invisible cuts.”7
Managing Through Fear: Why It’s a Broken Leadership Model
Leadership rooted in fear may get short-term compliance, but it erodes the foundations of a healthy workplace. Whether it manifests as passive tactics, such as quiet firing, or aggressive actions, like overt intimidation, fear-driven management undermines accountability and erodes trust. Employees become less willing to share ideas, take risks, or even speak honestly.
The result is predictable: innovation slows, communication breaks down, and loyalty evaporates. Fear doesn’t build performance; it breeds disengagement. Over time, this leadership style fuels high turnover, weakens collaboration, and corrodes workplace culture. Instead of creating a thriving, high-performing organization, fear-based leaders end up managing a workforce that’s disengaged, defensive, and always looking for an exit.
What to Do Instead: Build a Transparent Feedback Culture
Rather than managing through fear, with all of its attendant negative impacts, leaders should focus on building high-functioning, resilient organizations through transparent and open communication. Set clear expectations for performance, then follow through with coaching, not avoidance.
One of the most important and impactful management practices to embrace is regular one-on-one coaching and feedback sessions. Learning management system (LMS) software provider TalentLMS “urges employers to train managers who tend to shape company culture to seek out feedback from employees regularly. When possible, those consultations should be conducted in one-on-one meetings to allow staff to express their concerns more freely, especially those contributing to any quiet cracking underway.”3
Leaders can go a step further and emulate the Genchi Genbutsu (”go and see”) management philosophy embraced by Toyota: “Leaders embed, observe, and critically, understand before deciding. It’s a major reason why (Toyota) remains the world’s leading car brand.
“From there it’s about rebuilding connection. Be authentic: own the challenges, and remember that people respect honesty over perfection. Surface and elevate the true human insights that come from the front lines. Then close the loop: when people see changes made from their input, trust grows.”7
Additional approaches to embrace include:
- Invest in professional development: TalentLMS advises employers to “double down on learning and development, and adopt the view that training is more than a skill-building tool; it’s a confidence booster.”3
- Deliver functional skills training: Provide employees with training in their functional area (marketing, finance, sales, supply chain, etc.), including training on applicable AI tools and best practices, to update and expand their capabilities.
- Do regular team building: Professional team building activities improve collaboration and communication skills through fun, engaging activities. A regular cadence of team building programs helps build a feedback-positive culture in a positive, productive way.
Alternatives to Quiet Firing That Actually Work
Instead of creating a toxic workplace environment, help everyone on the team perform up to expectations by clearly defining roles and expectations of accountability. If one employee’s performance is falling short, document your concerns and initiate feedback conversations early. Explore skills training or other approaches that can help employees – provided they are willing to put in the work – improve their output and contributions to the team.
Provide managers with training in skills like active listening, coaching frameworks, and feedback modeling. Leadership development training workshops, such as Essential Supervisory Skills and our Manager’s Guide to Business Coaching, help participants learn and reinforce essential skills for building relationships and trust.
Partner with HR or external facilitators to support accountability and training, keeping in mind that leadership training is important for every employee, not only managers, to improve communication, emotional intelligence, and collaboration skills.
Rather than fear-based leadership, organizations should focus on approaches like:
- Collaborative leadership: Focus on “power with” rather than “power over,” empowering team members to contribute ideas and make decisions together. By flattening hierarchies, listening actively, and valuing diverse perspectives, collaborative leaders create environments where the best solutions can emerge.
- Purpose-driven leadership: Motivate your people through vision rather than fear, inspiring employees by connecting their work to a meaningful mission. By prioritizing values and broader impact over short-term gains, purpose-driven leaders engage teams and foster loyalty.
- Emotionally intelligent leadership: Leverage empathy and self-awareness to build trust, manage conflict, and guide teams effectively. Valuing employees’ emotions and creating inclusive, psychologically safe environments empowers individuals to perform at their best, while fostering strong and resilient cultures.8
These approaches are backed up by the Columbia Business School study, which concluded:
“Encouraging some diversity in perspectives may help prevent insular cultures from developing, but, overall, warmth inspires more loyalty, motivation, and respect than antagonism. Leaders who lean on aggressive tactics may believe their style is effective, but the evidence suggests that few workers prefer antagonism. At best, some tolerate it. Recognizing this gap could prompt leaders to reconsider their approach, making room for strategies that foster stronger, more enduring support.”6
How Team Building Can Help Prevent Disengagement and Silent Exits
Face-to-face team building exercises create psychological safety, improve feedback flow, and reinforce leadership accountability. Even if practices like fear-based leadership or quiet firing have already damaged your workplace culture, structured activities can reset group dynamics and rebuild communication pathways.
One great program to help build (or restore) trust, collaboration, and communication is Competition to Collaboration®. In this unique team building activity, two teams compete to complete a set of defined challenges in the fastest time, with an unexpected twist halfway through the program.
Another is Bridge to the Future, where teams complete one section of a bridge but also collaborate with other teams to ensure the final assembly, constructed only of cardboard and duct tape, is able to hold the weight of the entire group.
Take Action: Create a Culture that Communicates, Not Avoids
Leadership practices based on fear or avoidance, such as quiet firing, can cause long-term damage to teams and organizational performance by reducing morale, employee engagement, and trust, while increasing resistance to change and negatively impacting the brand image.
Rather than leading through fear, high-performing organizations (and leaders who want to build a high-performance culture) emphasize honest and open communication, timely and thoughtful feedback, and leadership courage. They invest in professional development training and team building to foster an emotionally intelligent, collaborative style of leadership.
Discover how Best Corporate Events can help your enterprise create a culture grounded in trust and influence-based leadership through professional development and team building programs that can be customized to address any business scenario. Contact us to initiate a conversation about how we can assist you in enhancing leadership and collaboration skills throughout your organization and addressing your specific objectives.
Sources:
- “Quiet firing becomes a popular way for companies to cut staff without layoffs,” The Business Journals. https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/news/2025/05/30/quiet-firing-employers-employees-raises-benefits.html?utm_source=bestcorporateevents
- “Quiet firing is spreading, but there are business risks to tactics to push workers out,” Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/91391282/quiet-firing-is-spreading-but-there-are-business-risks-to-tactics-to-push-workers-out?utm_source=bestcorporateevents
- “How to Respond to ‘Quiet Cracking,’ a New Workplace Threat,” MSN. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/how-to-respond-to-quiet-cracking-a-new-workplace-threat/ar-AA1Hah40?ocid=nl_article_link
- “1 big thing: CEOs try fright,” Axios. https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-3825d4b7-cdde-4473-8dcd-db692b7e3c2d.html?chunk=1&utm_term=twsocialshare#story1
- “3 fear-induced mistakes business leaders make (and how to avoid them),” Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/91394066/3-fear-induced-mistakes-business-leaders-make-and-how-to-avoid-them?utm_source=bestcorporateevents
- “Why Aggressive Leaders Still Rise to Power—and Why Most People Still Prefer the Opposite,” Columbia Business School. https://business.columbia.edu/research-brief/aggressive-leadership-management?utm_source=bestcorporateevents
- “The real workplace threat isn’t AI. It’s leadership disconnect,” Fast Company, https://www.fastcompany.com/91350816/the-real-workplace-threat-isn-ai-its-leadership-disconnect-ai-leadership-disconnect?utm_source=bestcorporateevents
- “3 management styles that beat out aggressive leadership, and how to master them,” Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/91388336/3-management-styles-that-beat-out-aggressive-leadership-and-how-to-master-them?utm_source=bestcorporateevents
