Stealth sackings: Why do employers lire staff for minor misdemeanours?

A hard line on conduct could prevent bigger lapses, but it may prompt claims of disguised cost savings.

- Anjli Raval

Amazon chief executive Andy Iassy recently told employees that a new plan requiring them to be in the office five days a week did not amount to a "backdoor layoff".

Yet his reported comments at a company-wide meeting last week did not rebut a previous suggestion from a senior manager that staff who fail to comply could look for work elsewhere.

As companies try to rein in costs and restrict workplace initiatives that do not help profits, workers are wary of falling victim to a fresh horror: stealth sacking.

Alongside a string of recent publicly announced mass layoffs by companies including Nissan, Boeing and Citigroup - there have been a series of employers quietly justifying smaller-scale dismissals because of seemingly minor violations of company policy.

Here the focus is not on the size and scope of redundancy programmes, how humanely managers handled them or whether support or severance pay was offered to affected staff, but on the specific rationale behind the decisions.

Facebook owner Meta, for example, sacked about two dozen staff for abusing meal credit vouchers, while EY terminated a group of employees for watching multiple training videos at once, the Financial Times has reported.

Infractions that workers have likely interpreted as minor misdemeanours in the past can now be sackable offences, and may prompt questions about whether cost savings are being disguised.