The empty desk by Polly Hobbs

There is a particularly cowardly trick developing in modern corporate life, firing someone without actually firing them. No letter. No meeting. No “your position has been terminated”. Instead, the employee watches their job slowly disappear.

First, the important meetings stop. Then the interesting projects are reassigned. A responsibility that once gave the job purpose is suddenly handed to someone else. Invitations stop arriving. Decisions are made without consultation. The employee is given smaller tasks, routine administration and work nobody particularly wants. Perhaps a promotion mysteriously vanishes from the horizon. Perhaps training is “not a priority right now”. Eventually, the employee sits at a desk performing the professional equivalent of breathing into a paper bag.

The company has not fired them, of course. The company has merely made staying unbearable. This practice has acquired fashionable names such as “quiet firing” and “quiet cutting”, but there is nothing particularly modern about it. The terminology is new; the cowardice is ancient. The technique is remarkably simple: remove responsibility, recognition, opportunity and purpose until the employee concludes that leaving is preferable to remaining.

It is corporate warfare conducted with stationery. There is an obvious attraction for management. A formal dismissal requires a conversation. Conversations create questions. Questions create documentation. Documentation creates accountability. And accountability is terribly inconvenient when the objective is simply to make somebody disappear from the payroll without having to say so.

So instead of management making a decision, the employee is encouraged to make it for them. That distinction matters. If an employee is genuinely underperforming, then management should say so. Explain the problem. Set expectations. Offer support. Establish measurable objectives. If the employee still cannot perform, terminate the employment honestly and professionally.

That is what management is for. Stripping away somebody's meaningful responsibilities is not management. It is avoidance dressed up as organisational strategy. Worse, it can be psychologically brutal. Work is not merely a transaction between labour and salary. For many people, professional responsibility provides identity, competence and a sense that their experience matters. Take those things away and the message becomes unmistakable: you are no longer wanted, but we would prefer that you announce it yourself.

There is an especially ugly irony here. Companies spend fortunes talking about engagement, purpose, culture and employee wellbeing. They commission surveys, employ consultants and create glossy presentations explaining how every employee is “our greatest asset”. Yet the same organisation can quietly turn an experienced employee into office furniture and then congratulate itself when that employee resigns.

The corporate vocabulary is wonderfully inventive. “Restructuring.” “Realignment.” “Role optimisation.” “Business transformation.” Behind these magnificent phrases there can sometimes be a very simple reality: we would like you to leave, but we don't want to tell you.

And the consequences rarely stop with the targeted employee. Colleagues notice. They see who suddenly disappears from meetings and whose responsibilities migrate elsewhere. They understand that loyalty can be rewarded with invisibility. The lesson spreads: do not become too expensive, too independent, too inconvenient or perhaps simply too old-fashioned to fit the latest organisational fashion.

Trust begins to evaporate. The sensible alternative is almost offensively straightforward: tell people the truth. If their performance is inadequate, tell them. If their position is redundant, tell them. If the business has changed and their role no longer exists, tell them. Treat adults like adults.

A company brave enough to dismiss somebody honestly may lose an employee. A company that quietly dismantles somebody's career can lose something considerably more valuable: the belief among everyone else that management deserves their trust. There is nothing clever about making someone quit. It is simply firing with the courage removed.