Quiet Firing

Quiet Firing

You have probably heard of quiet quitting? If you haven’t we wrote a blog on that too and you can read it by clicking here.

What is quiet firing

It is where a company does not make a big fuss of firing an employee. Why write a post about this? It is coming. Things go full circle. For the last couple of years at least employees have had employers bending over backwards to retain them. A company will have a retention strategy. Some retention strategies are more sophisticated than others. However, that will change in 2023. At least in certain industries anyway.

Post Brexit Working Britain

Brexit, in my opinion anyway, was a terrible idea made worse by incompetent execution of already challenging red tape geo-political roadblocks along the way.

Before Brexit many industries were, again in my opinion, reliant on EU workers. These were amongst others industries like hospitality, transport and healthcare. And the reason so many EU workers took these jobs is that the indigenous people of Britain did not want to do those jobs on mass enough to meet demand.

Following Brexit

Following Brexit many of those same EU workers left Britain leaving a gaping hole in the UK employment sector. Some industries have become almost crippled by this exodus. And if you take healthcare and transport, which are critical, you have serious issues.

We had a semi-medical emergency at work, which whilst admittedly not life threatening, did require hospital admission. Under a normal functioning healthcare system an ambulance, with a first responder unit in advance, would have come to help. Instead we were advised an ambulance wait of several hours so driving through Bristol to A & E would be better.

However, at the time of writing Bristol has several key artery roads to the centre, where the A&E unit is, closed or blocked with traffic for roadworks. These same roadworks, due to worker shortages, have taken months not days to complete. And furthermore other transport options are a problem because of worker shortages yet again. You see the pattern?

Why is this going to change

A recession in Britain is an inevitability. You can’t operate a system that doesn’t have enough people to supply to it so you have to double down to a manageable level. And in turn everything resets.

The issue for many industries though is that during the boom period which has been artificially inflated for way too long and has lead to chronic inflation, there will be a reset. And that reset basically means less demand from over-inflated industries for staffing and more from necessity one’s. Those same necessity industries, which will be some of the only one’s hiring, won’t pay as much comparatively either.

Add to that the absurd volume of graduates with debt up to the eyeballs qualifying for industries which are already oversubscribed, and you’ve got a bunch of overqualified people with nothing to go to.

Enter Quiet Firing

Companies have already started firing underperforming workers rather than holding on to them to improve vanity retention metrics. Next is firing those who occupy roles that can be amalgamated into others workloads.

For Gen Z’s who have become accustomed to a degree seeing mass demand for their services and benefits verging on bribery to join, you could have a nasty shock coming. Unless you can deliver, graft and tow the line companies will simply move to quiet firing you.

And why not loud firing? Social media and brand marketing would take a hit if they made a big thing of it when they don’t have to.

How do you protect yourself

Become invaluable to a company. Want to know how to do that? We’ve done a blog on that too. Click here.