What is 'quiet firing' and are you facing it at work? 5 signs you must notice

Not every job is lost in a battle of words and wits with your manager and HR. Some include you getting sidelined quietly and gradually, until all you can do is put your papers in. According to a 2025 HRTech survey of more than 1,000 U.S.

managers revealed that 53% of employers admit to using quiet firing techniques, and nearly half of 20,000 people surveyed on LinkedIn in 2022 had seen it in action or experienced it themselves.

What is quiet firing?

While the word may be knocking on your door now, its arrival has been long done. Quiet firing is when an employer makes a job so unrewarding, isolating or unproductive that the employee feels the pressure to quit rather than be formally terminated.

“Quiet firing is not new; it’s just getting more attention,” said Edwin Aiwazian, managing attorney at Lawyers for Justice, to USA Today.

Why does quiet firing happen?

The entire reason behind the process is a desire to cut costs and risks. It also helps companies avoid severance packages and legal risk. Additionally, in the times of remote and hybrid work, quiet firing has become an easier method to execute.

5 signs you are being quietly fired at work

From being excluded from meetings to stalling increments and promotions with no explanations, there can be a variety of ways in which you could be quietly fired by your manager.

“You will have responsibilities pulled back, the support that may have been there disappears, your career growth will stall, and the hope is that you will eventually quit,” said Jason Walker, Psy.D., Ph.D., program director and associate professor of Industrial-Organizational and Applied Psychology at Adler University.

Excluded from meetings

While you may have been an active and responsible member of your work meetings, quiet firing could lead to you being excluded from meetings, their emails and even MOMs.

According to experts, this is the most common sign of quiet firing and should be taken as a red flag for your departure. Additionally, this could also exist in the form of exclusion from projects and abandonment of text threads that were active before.

Shift in responsibilities

This could be in two ways. You could either be overburdened with unrealistic tasks or you could be sidelined with meaningless projects; in both scenarios, quiet firing is ongoing.

“Similar to bullying behaviours, you may be assigned unreasonable workloads or left with unclear expectations that feel like a setup,” said Walker. “While this is a more aggressive form of quiet firing, it does happen.”

Lack of support

While quiet firing in general is enough to give you a worrisome and emotional whiplash, with the sudden disappearance of support from your superiors, you could end up feeling alone, lost and isolated, making it more challenging to do your work, and even more so, correctly.

When that environment becomes unbearable, the employee leaves.

Pause in growth

A sudden pause in the development of your role at the company could be signalling the lack of your future in it. The one-on-ones that were earlier discussed how you could participate more and be more efficient, could now be just a catch-up that is pointless and not heading anywhere fruitful. And when you personally inquire about your role, you could end up receiving vague responses or none at all."Your career growth comes to a standstill, and you are passed over for promotions and raises for no apparent reason," said Walker.

Policy-driven quiet firing

Many employees form their lives around working from home. In fact, it can be the sole reason why one joins a particular company. However, a Return to office (RTO) could be used as a form of quiet firing, leading employees to exit on their own.Wende Smith, head of people operations at BambooHR, stated that research from the company found RTO to be a quiet-firing tactic, adding that 25% of VP and C-suite executives and 18% of HR professionals hoped for voluntary turnover during RTO.