What is Quiet Cutting?
Quiet cutting, also known as “silent sacking”, is a tactic the employers implement, where employees are reassigned to degraded job roles rather than being directly laid off. It ultimately leads to employees quitting jobs due to fear of adversities in career paths, lower morale, increased stress, etc.
It is a subset of “quiet firing” to reduce costs, balance business stability, etc. Employees are deliberately placed in ill-fitted or diminishing job roles that have a potential negative impact on their mental health, and morale. It is an indirect way of subtly encouraging employees to resign rather than terminating them to save the redundancy pay or cost of termination that the employee is entitled to receive from the employer if the company terminates the employee.
Although the strategy of “Quiet cutting” has been used in old times, the term gained popularity in the year 2023 in the American labor market due to fear of future economic crises. It alludes to the term “quiet quitting”, where employees put minimal effort into accomplishing their tasks and fulfilling their primary duties. Quiet quitting reflects a balance that is more favorable toward employees, in contrast, “Quiet cutting” reflects the balance being more favorable towards employers.
In situations involving the reassignment of employees’ job roles, the legal options are limited. So, employers should maintain transparency in shifting the job roles or degrading the job posts of employees with clarity and communicating to them the reason behind such a move. This will help them maintain a sound relationship between them as well as will preserve the morale of the employees. Furthermore, it is always practical and advisable for employers to directly ask employees to resign or terminate in adversities rather than be involved in quiet-cutting tactics.
