If you’ve heard the term “quiet firing” recently, this is what it means. It is not directly cutting head count but making it likely that some percentage of employees will leave due to your decisions.
It really shouldn’t be newsworthy that someone thinks employees don’t care about shareholders, and for those of us in the legal space, it should also not come as a shock that your staff doesn’t care about “profits per partner.” It’s irrelevant. I spent years assuming that if profits and shareholder value were up, that would result in better pay and raises for everyone. That was naïve. We were likely talking about the difference between a 2% and a 3% raise. It’s not nothing but not worth all the long hours and life-wrecking commitments we are often asked to give to work.
I wonder how many survey responders watch their managers struggle and/or fail because they weren’t prepared for management. Why would we be surprised that so many are happy not to bring that upon themselves?
As the article below points out, I bet this wasn’t a technical issue. It’s not a bug. It’s a poor configuration choice, yes, likely made worse by a poor change management process. Somewhere along the way, you’d think someone would have it written down that this existed, and someone would see it written down and act on it. That didn’t happen. You’d also like to think there would be a hard rule to enable MFA in any environment, including testing ones.
The interesting thing about this is the fact that there’s a lack of confidence in the employer because I think many employers brought that on themselves. Layoffs might make the financials look good with that cut in expenses, but they are also an admission that management screwed up. When your management screws up and people have to be let go, the ones who are left behind don’t see company leadership in a sparkly light.
Now, I’m not going to even argue that remote work is better and helps people be more productive and innovative because you already know where I stand on that issue. Let me just throw this out there instead. When your workforce is remote you widen the pool of people who can work for you and want to work for you. That wider candidate pool invites more talented people to come work for you and talented people will find their own ways to be productive and innovative.