Quiet fleecing: Are you robbing top talent of time and money?

Employers, you need to stop going back to "good workers" over and over again

Quiet fleecing: Are you robbing top talent of time and money?

You’ve heard of quiet firing and quiet quitting – now brace yourself for quiet fleecing, the latest workplace trend that’s wreaking havoc on organizations. Coined by the Economic Policy Institute, quiet fleecing relates to the practice of stagnating wages in the face of inflation and cost of living fears, leaving employees with less than they had the previous year. 

Employers opting to take up this practice may see cost reductions in the short-term, but in the long-term they’ll experience massive turnover, dismal morale levels and irreparable loss in the war for talent. But for organizational psychologist Dr Amanda Potter, CEO of Zircon, and host of the Chief Psychology Officer podcast, she doesn’t believe that employers go out of their way to fleece their people – it’s a complex mix of rising workplace pressures and a lack of understanding time management. 

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“I believe that we get into bad habits of asking certain talented employees to do things outside of their remit. Employers may think “Oh, this person’s great at this particular task, I’ll just ask them to do it again and again”, which is causing burnout. Sometimes employers don't recognize how long things take – we have a bias for underestimating tasks until we actually perform them ourselves.”

There’s a number of biases present here – from a misunderstanding of how long a task takes to negatively prioritizing “good” employees. Relying on certain people to get the job done is fueling quiet fleecing, and driving your top talent towards the door. Eighty one percent of Canadian employees feel burned out right now, according to data collected by Ceridian, triggering 20% of that group to actively seek out new jobs. And it’s not just a junior issue – this burnout pandemic is massively impacting leadership teams. O.C Tanner’s recent Global Culture Report found that leaders are 43% more likely to say work is interfering with their ability to be happy in other areas of their lives, triggering mental health issues and high turnover. In the face of such worrying data, employers need to take a more active role in stamping out quiet fleecing and look at better ways to manage workloads. But, as Dr Potter tells HRD, it’s not all in the hands of the employer.

“I think a lot of this culture of overwork in remote work can be traced back to employees wanting to prove themselves away from the office,” she says. “It's not necessarily being driven by the managers. Most people I talk to as a coach, who manage remote workers, say their people are doing more hours now than they would've done in the past in order to prove to their line manager that they’re productive. They’ve almost created their own psychological contract with themselves in which they have to prove themselves much harder in WFH just to prove their value.”

From an organizational perspective, employers should be communicating the importance of healthy habits. If you’re being asked to do things beyond what’s expected, reaffirm with your teams what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Secondly, encourage your people to take regular breaks and prioritize their own mental health first. Having favourites, continuously going back to the same people, isn’t a positive thing – even though it may feel like one.”

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Delegation is key here. As a leader, don’t feel obliged to take on more and more responsibilities at the cost of your own wellbeing. Quiet fleecing is born out of overwork, it’s not a conscious decision that employers make. That being said, the only way to stamp it out and prevent mass burnout and turnover is to look closer at your day-to-day practices and understand how to better manage time and effort.

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