Ep. 5 Ethical Discussion on Quiet Firing

Is it ethical for a company to employ legal but unethical practices? This episode of 'Learning to Manage' explores the impact of managers on  mental health and the ethics of quiet firing, offering a detailed examination of the topic through both a professional and biblical lens. 

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Transcript

Welcome to 'Learning to Manage,' the podcast where I, Aruna Seegolam, use what I’ve learned from my MBA and my current coursework to attain my Doctorate in Business Administration degree with a concentration in strategic management to become a better manager. I currently work full-time as an operations director and I managed employees for seven years. I’ve been that crappy, toxic manager and been managed by both wonderful and toxic managers myself so I actively work on learning how to lead with intention and compassion. Whether you're leading a team, managing projects, or trying to navigate the complexities of organizational dynamics, join me as I learn strategies and get the inspiration needed to excel in a leadership role and become a better servant leader.

This is 'Learning to Manage.'

I just took a course called workforce planning and employment and I don’t know what I thought this class would be like but I could not have taken it at a more unfortunate time in my life. The course taught me a lot about strategically recruiting, hiring, retaining, and terminating employees. I learned that there is a lot more, how do I put this, negative strategy, to the management that I want to do, and that businesses employ unethical practices to, for lack of a better term, have their way. What particularly impacted me about this course was the discussions around terminations (but I do plan to discuss recruitment, hiring, and retention in other podcast episodes). 

So again, this is a sensitive topic for me because of my experiences which left my mental health just…SIGH. Let me preface this by saying I know the difference between sadness and depression and as someone who has transitioned from sadness to depression, back to sadness, I’ll take sadness any day over depressive feelings. When things happening at a job shift me from sadness that I worked so hard the last two years to get myself out of BACK into depressive feelings, it is time to go. 

I’m still struggling to get myself out of this slump, so when the week 8 assignment was “is it ethical for managers to create uncomfortable situations so that employees quit?”, I considered skipping the assignment altogether which would bring me down to a B and destroy all my hard work to get straight A’s the past three years. 

It was a rough day writing this simple assignment, so I figured I’d share it here, since I’m not ready to speak about my quiet firing experiences yet. I do attend a Christian university so there is biblical integration. I originally thought I’d remove it for the sake of the podcast episode, but I realized that it was important to discuss in the overall understanding and wanting to connect ethical behavior to servant leadership.

Here we go…

Managers have many unpleasant tasks, conversations, and situations to address, one of them is having to terminate an employee. While it can cause employees to behave unprofessionally and cause discomfort to the manager delivering the news, it is sometimes required for a manager to do. To avoid terminating an employee, some leadership teams employ strategies to make the employee uncomfortable so that they quit. While some of the behaviors can be done ethically, like reducing hours based on business need, some cause negative feelings and are unethical to do like other negative changes to the job. Employees, as human beings, deserve to be treated with respect. To circumvent these unethical strategies, managers can create uniform processes and be truthful in their feedback to employees. When employees trust their managers, there is room for professional, supportive conversations. 

There are avoidable and unavoidable reasons for employee turnover (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2022). In addition, employees leave jobs voluntarily and involuntarily. All these types of turnovers impact an organization’s costs and benefits. Costs include managerial or HR staff time surrounding the termination, paying out accrued leave, dispute resolution costs, possible lawsuits, productivity costs, replacement costs, and training costs. Benefits include decreased costs in salary, positive changes for the team, and the replacement employee could be a better fit than the terminated employee. Outright terminating an employee can be uncomfortable for the manager that has to perform this action. Nonetheless, it is unethical to create conditions for employees that are unpleasant in the hopes that these employees would quit, regardless of the employer’s reason. Employees do not want to work in toxic cultures and negatively respond to relationship conflicts with their supervisors (Marquardt et al., 2022). This makes it very important for supervisors to be ethical leaders because they value their employees and create good relationships within the organization. Being an ethical leader is difficult if the culture in the organization does not allow for it. If a leader creates conflicts with their employees, it will diminish trust, as is explained in Luke 16:10, which states “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much” (New International Version, 2011).

In this case, the ethical question is whether workplace situations should be made unbearable so that employees quit instead of managers having to deal with the negative feelings or any retaliation. Laws are in place to ensure that there is fair treatment across all employees and that the organization has a legitimate reason for terminating the employee, however there is no law to protect employees from employers using legality to treat them unfairly (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2022). Employers could use reasons like change in work tasks, a reduction in hours, or other job changes that are legal that they know will cause the employee to be so dissatisfied that they quit. This can be done because the manager is familiar with the employee’s job description, performance, behaviors, and possibly their preferences. This hostility by the manager can be called abusive supervision which has a negative impact on an employee’s job satisfaction, job performance, and their health which leads to higher turnover intentions and eventual turnover (Wang et al., 2022). “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (New International Version, 2011, Matthew 7:12). This verse instructs leaders to make decisions that they would like to be executed on them. Leaders can create processes that allow for easier conversations with employees. Part of being a leader includes having many uncomfortable conversations and leaders in organizations must ensure that the organization is acting legally and ethically. 

Employees can engage in a concept called quiet quitting which means that they continue to work at an organization, but they do not perform extra duties and are lacking motivation (Anand et al., 2024). These employees do not quit, but they do the minimum amount of work required so that they are not fired, which negatively impacts productivity in the workplace. This is also unethical and different from turnover in the organization, but it does impact retention strategy because the employee is no longer performing well and a replacement employee would be more beneficial to the position (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2022). Therefore, alongside quiet quitting is quiet firing, which is explained in this ethical question here, where an employer creates negative work situations intentionally (Anand et al., 2024). Quiet firing is unethical because employers are creating hostile work environments by targeting employees. The actions that employers take are considered illegal workplace misconduct and employers are not protected legally, while directly firing an employee would be protected. Romans 13:1-2 ties together law and ethics well. “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves” (New International Version, 2011).

So that was the meat of my assignment. Managers are responsible for creating trusting and supportive environments. When they remove that, there is a lot of unethical things that happen and it seems like the blame is put on the employee. Where this is getting tricky is that legal does not always equal ethical and by using legality as a way to protect from unethical behaviors, organizations are playing a costly game where they may not always be protected. If managers are consistently supporting employees the way they are supposed to, it’s not that there will be a reduction in unhappy employees who get terminated – individuals will undoubtedly be upset – but employees will not work and live in a state of uncertainty. When that termination conversation eventually happens, employees know that they’ve been advocated for and seen by their employer. It’s okay to care for others and maintain a respectful relationship with employees. This is why I want to be a servant leader. Serving employees isn’t such a bad thing. 

Thank you for joining me on this episode of 'Learning to Manage.' 

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If you have any questions, topic suggestions, or stories to share about your own leadership journey, I would love to hear from you. Please visit the show notes for my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and some additional resources.  

Until next time, I'm Aruna Seegolam signing off from 'Learning to Manage.' Take care and keep learning, keep growing, and keep leading with purpose.

References

Anand, A., Doll, J., & Ray, P. (2024). Drowning in silence: A scale development and validation of quiet quitting and quiet firing. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 32(4), 721-743. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-01-2023-3600

Judge, T. A., & Kammeyer-Mueller, J. D. (2022). Staffing organizations (10th Ed.). McGraw Hill, LLC.

Marquardt, D. J., Manegold, J., & Brown, L. W. (2022). Integrating relational systems theory with ethical leadership: How ethical leadership relates to employee turnover intentions. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 43(1), 156-179. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-04-2021-0190

New International Version. (2011). BibleGateway.com. http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-International-Version-NIV-Bible/#booklist

Wang, I.-A., Lin, S.-Y., Chen, Y.-S., & Wu, S.-T. (2022). The influences of abusive supervision on job satisfaction and mental health: The path through emotional labor. Personnel Review, 51(2), 823-838. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-11-2018-0465