Study: quiet firing quiet quitting rise together

Quiet quitting entered the workplace conversation as an employee problem: staff doing only what the job description asks and nothing more. A new peer-reviewed study of the quiet firing quiet quitting connection flips that framing. When employers practice quiet firing, making conditions worse so people leave on their own, employees respond by pulling back to the bare minimum. The researchers found the two behaviors move together, and they argue quiet quitting works as a response to management behavior as much as a personal choice.

The study, published in the International Journal of Business Information Systems and led by Ebrahim Rajabpour, studied workers in the oil, gas and petroleum industry. The team set out to test the quiet firing quiet quitting link with data rather than anecdote. Quiet firing was defined as employers indirectly encouraging workers to leave by creating an undesirable environment or withholding opportunities and support. Quiet quitting meant employees limiting work to formal responsibilities rather than taking on extra tasks. According to the researchers, the data showed a positive relationship between the two: as quiet firing increased, so did quiet quitting.

Workplace relationships changed the picture. The quiet firing quiet quitting relationship was weaker where social capital ran higher, the researchers found, meaning the networks, trust, shared norms and working relationships that let people cooperate and communicate. The researchers suggest attention should shift from individual disengagement and its effect on turnover to broader organizational behavior, since management practices can drive the very withdrawal they complain about.

The survey behind the warning

A separate survey by the UK law firm Irwin Mitchell, reported by BusinessMole, gives the pattern a human shape. The firm polled two thousand four hundred and seventy-five workers and found nine in ten had not come across the term quiet firing. Roughly a quarter of women said a manager had ignored them or given them no feedback, and a similar share said information had been withheld from them in a way that made them want to leave. About a third of all workers said they had experienced bullying dressed up as banter. Students were the group most likely to recognize the term, ahead of workers in creative and media jobs.

Deborah Casale at Irwin Mitchell said there is no excuse for treating employees this way, and that employers should deal with problems directly rather than making staff feel undervalued until they leave. The firm noted such behavior can amount to constructive dismissal where it breaks the trust at the heart of the employment relationship. Its advice to workers who sense the pattern is to raise the issue through a grievance rather than simply resigning, and to get advice early. The awareness gap matters: employees who cannot name quiet firing struggle to challenge it.

What workplaces should do instead

For young workers, the findings land in familiar territory. Quiet quitting began as a generational conversation about boundaries after pandemic burnout, and early-career staff often have the least leverage to push back when quiet firing quiet quitting dynamics take hold in their team. The study's social capital finding offers a practical way to read a workplace: teams with real trust and open communication absorb pressure better than ones where everyone is quietly on their own.

The researchers' message to employers is straightforward: look at your own practices before diagnosing your staff. HR teams tend to treat quiet quitting as a motivation problem to fix with engagement programs. The findings reframe quiet firing quiet quitting as an organizational problem instead, suggesting that clear feedback, honest communication and keeping people in the loop on decisions would do more than another engagement survey.

Irwin Mitchell says it will keep pushing awareness of quiet firing, arguing that naming the behavior is the first step toward challenging it. The academic team gave the quiet firing quiet quitting dynamic a plain reading: when support drops, effort follows. For workers, the takeaway from both sources is the same, and it is unglamorous: keep a written record of what happens and raise it through proper channels, rather than waiting for the job to become unbearable.

Sources: phys.org on the Rajabpour study; BusinessMole on the Irwin Mitchell survey.