As more companies demand employees spend more days in their workplaces each week, some critics claim that tightening return to office (RTO) rules in part aim to provoke resignations from employees unwilling to give up their remote or hybrid work arrangements. Data now suggests employer use of that indirect quiet-firing manner of reducing head count is far more widespread than previously suspected — and often involves tactics that go beyond ordering people back to their desks.

Reinforced RTO mandates, especially by large companies like Amazon and Starbucks, sparked accusations that management’s tighter in-office requirements are a cover for pushing flexibility-loving workers to quit. It turns out, businesses are also using other methods to trim head count, including cutting worker benefits, increasing workloads, delaying pay raises, or gradually isolating targets in the workplace until they resign. A recent survey of 1,128 U.S. business leaders by CV writing platform ResumeTemplates found 42 percent of respondents admitted to having used those quiet-firing strategies this year, with an additional 11 percent saying they plan to do so in coming months.

The main reason that total of 53 percent of participants said they’d employed the stratagem was to avoid severance, legal, and other costs that layoffs usually generate. They also credited the ruse with averting the bad blood and even worse reputational damage that firing people can create.

In addition to establishing that a small........

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