Thousands of employees have been laid off between January 2024 and May 2024, as job cuts continue across industries. According to Layoffs.fyi, 90,916 employees have been let go by as many as 317 tech companies, so far this year.
A former employee at Wipro, who was laid off, recounts her harrowing experience. She was pressured into leaving her job without a formal notice. “No official letter or e-mail was provided. The information about layoffs was communicated through the HR team and the managers. We were barely given any time to find a new job. Most employees had to put their papers down within two weeks”.
Beyond the headlines: The rise of silent layoffs
Companies across the world are implementing something that has come to be called ‘silent layoffs’ or ‘quiet layoffs’. This is the process of employees being pressured to leave the company voluntarily without making much noise. Silent layoffs are mostly happening in the IT sector.
IT firms largely resorted to silent layoffs in a bid to cop with the setbacks suffered due to the pandemic-induced recession. According to a Moneycontrol report, in March 2024 alone, approximately 500 employees were laid off in India as part of operational streamlining. In 2024, Infosys reportedly asked nearly 200-500 employees to voluntarily resign—an allegation that the company denied.
Silent layoffs vs quiet firing
Although the words 'silent layoff' and 'quiet firing' are synonymously used to refer to the phenomenon of employees being forced out, there are subtle differences between the two, particularly from the employer's point of view.
Silent layoff is the practice of giving employees a notice period so that they have sufficient time to plan for the future. Quiet firing, meanwhile, refers to the practice of making the role of an employee undesirable by either giving them a huge amount of work, assigning them insignificant tasks that undermine their position, or giving poor performance reviews.
These, in turn, may prompt an employee to quit the company.
Employees who face quiet firing would be requested to leave their office space within two weeks, depending on the organisation.
How silent layoffs are affecting employees
When a company starts the process of silent layoff or quiet firing, the employees are pressured to either tender their resignation or be in the PIP (performance improvement plan) period wherein they are forced to prove their abilities through multiple projects and refined skills within a stipulated time.
Earlier, companies used to lay off freshers as they had little to contribute to the company and received lower wages compared to their more experienced seniors. However, this trend appears to have reversed now as companies are targetting more experienced and higher-paid employees as they would possibly be stagnant despite being paid generously.
When your employer does not anymore assign a project to you, it may mean that your employment is at stake because a non-contributing employee is a financial burden on an organisation. Besides, employees who are unable to work on-site in unfamiliar locations may also be pressured into leaving.
The other side of the story
Employers value the growth of their company and accord it more importance than individual employees.
“In India, the court favours the employee. When the issue is taken up legally, the employers will have no support and will face consequences that leaves the company in an undesirable situation” observes the director of a leading IT company headquartered in Bengaluru.
If an employee with a niche skill, which they acquired during their course of employment with a company, resigns, the employer finds it hard to replace him/her. Such employees are paid high if they continue with the company.
“For the employer what is more important is the value from the employee. Depending on whether you play a direct revenue role, an indirect revenue role or cost-centric role in the revenue generation team it is easy to decide who we must keep in the company and who must be laid off,” says the IT firm director.
Many companies also follow a policy of laying off employees who were hired last or first. When it comes to the firsts, they are normally told directly to leave the company. In the case of employees hired last, companies make their positions insignificant, forcing them to leave as it would help them reserve their position and experience.
“When an employee is being laid off, they are not sent at random. If an employee is 45 years and he retires at 55 then the cost of keeping them for 10 years and what revenue will be generated from them in that period is strategically calculated.”
In a team of 20, if the cost of using artificial intelligence or machine learning is far lesser than sustaining manpower in the company then they will be replaced and only the most efficient employees will be retained. Even if an employee exhibits low performance, consistency is more important. For a good company ‘sustainable performance’ and ‘levels of dependency’ are significant when deciding on who to retain and who to let go.