9 Despicable Ways Your Company Is Making You Resign

These days, companies can come under intense scrutiny if they are to lay off staff without what are judged to be “justified” reasons.

From the employers point of view, they want to cut as much costs as possible with as little trouble as possible so that they can continue to pay million-dollar salaries and bonuses to top management.

From the employees point of view, they want to keep their jobs so as to continue receiving an income to feed their families. And if they really have to go without any hint of guilt, a bulging retrenchment benefits package sure makes the pain a little more bearable.

This battle of will can get gruesome when push comes to shove.

And because the last thing a sneaky company wants is to have a disgruntled staff seek help from the authorities or go to the media, they often use underhand methods to get unwanted employees to quit their jobs themselves.

Resignation don’t just make it easier for Human Resource (HR) since they have 1 less awkward conversation to take part in, they can also mean considerable savings as the business will not incur expenses from asking a staff to leave.

So what are some of the most common despicable tricks up the sleeves of management? Are you being targeted right now?

Well… are you currently experiencing the following uncomfortable situations?

1) Salary cuts and/or withdrawal of benefits

Cutting the compensation package of employees is often disguised as an essential corporate restructure so as to “consolidate” operations and costs.

But how do you know that it’s not just a ploy to get you to quit? How do you know that every other staff is suffering the same salary cuts?

You won’t know because HR wants everyone to keep their contract details and compensation packages private. The moment you ask around, you can potentially be crossing a line stated in your terms of employment… making sacking you justifiable.

And those who have had a smaller cut than yours or did not suffer a cut at all will keep quiet about the favoritism showed to them so as to keep their own job positions safe.

If you know that your employer is recording record profits year-on-year or not being impacted by any global events, it could very well that they are using economic downturns as convenient excuses to cut the head count.

And you are on the chopping block.

Why else will they cut your salary? Why not just cut the benefits of top management and retain hundreds of staff while boosting morale at the same time?

2) Unrealistic targets

A good friend of mine just ran into this scenario.

He is into industrial sales and his annual sales target has been $400,000 annually for the last 6 years since he took up the job. He has hit his targets every year. This year, while in a regular sales meeting, the sales director arrived late and told him impromptu to hit $600,000… or else face the sack for failure to perform…

He got the message and handed in his resignation letter for a job he hated. He found out later that the new guy replacing him had the same sales target of $400,000.

He attribute the company’s unhealthy culture and behavior to it being a family-run business.

If your boss suddenly wants you to deliver 50% more results from the same job description, it is a sign that there is an underlying message that is left unspoken. You can either suck it up and slave your way towards your targets, or submit to defeat and start making those calls to job agencies.

3) Ridiculous internal transfers

There’s no better way to demoralize an employee than to transfer him to a redundant department… or one that he has absolutely no business to be in.

A female friend of mine was doing basic accounting for a large retailer. Although it was as boring as it gets, accounting was something that she had academic qualifications for. She had no problems with the mundane workplace anyway.

But one day, her supervisor told her that they are transferring her to the selling floor as the floor manager needed support staff during the sales season.

Can you imagine how ridiculous this sounds?

She was hired as an accountant and now asked to go become a promoter stationed at a sales wagon. For fear of being fired by refusing the transfer, she actually took up the new appointment. The management must be smarting over what happened next. Because she couldn’t even handle a week on the sales floor and resigned.

Now this is an extreme example of stupid transfers that don’t make sense. But it happens all the time in multinationals.

You could be asked to take on a broader job scope, tasked to support 2 more teams, given new appointments where all predecessors failed miserably and resigned, etc.

4) Overseas transfer

I’ve never faced a situation where I had to make a decision on an overseas transfer. But I do have friends who’s had such dilemmas to handle.

Your company will no doubt tell you that you will get more international exposure which is good for your career development in the long run. You have already mastered the local market. It’s time to unleash your talent to the world.

But what they don’t say is that you have become so dispensable that you will not be missed. In fact, so overpaid and underworked you have become, that the only way you can make a contribution is to go to a third world country and compete with employees who has little to no ownership in the jobs they do.

Only then can you stand out and have a senior manager’s presence.

Companies who execute such distasteful moves usually give you an ultimatum. You either:

• Stop complaining about your low salary (which they insist are already the ceiling)
• Go take on an overseas position that nobody wants
• Or just quit and stop bothering HR about your compensation package

It doesn’t matter what you decision is among the impossible options.

The fact that this ultimatum has been presented to you already tells you what they want you to do.

5) New people are being hired to do your job

How shocking will it be if you decided to chat up the new lonely guy in the office and found out that he is doing your job?

No wonder you found yourself having lesser things to do in recent weeks!

What’s happening is probably that you are pretty good at the job you do. And someone above you hates your guts and wants to test out how indispensable you are by getting someone else to do your job.

Ideally the people behind this arrangement wants to keep this trial as low key as possible until a competent replacement can be hired.

But sometimes, when such despicable acts are conducted publicly, it can be a direct communication to you to quit.

Be wary of the odd request that a new person will be doing your job… which frees you up to do the more critical stuff that is more worthy of your attention… you are then pushed to point #3…

6) Overlooked for inevitable promotion

HR can say all they want that no promotion is inevitable or guaranteed. But come on…

When you are the obvious choice or a top contender for a promotion, and then overlooked without even an interview, someone sitting in a power seat somewhere does not think a lot of you. In fact, they probably hope that you resign so that they don’t have to ponder about how they can justify the appointment of the new guy over you.

Everyone likes to be promoted even if they deny it. We usually want it for the extra authority and power, or at least the salary increment and beefier benefits that comes with a promotion.

To deny you in favor of a new guy is an insult. And very likely a declaration that “If you don’t like it, resign!”.

7) Your support team is playing musical chairs

If you are in higher management, making you crawl under the barb wires and jump through hoops can be a little tougher compared to middle-to-lower level employees.

This is because no matter how hard your big boss is making life for you, you can still pass on the stress to your support team and lay on blame on that sadist of a superior.

So the most effective way to stress you out and stealthily push you to failure is to go for your support team instead of you.

They start getting tasked with supporting other people and other departments… totally crippling your productiveness. Even your personal secretary now has to make travel arrangements for 5 people rather than just you. You now have to fight and scramble for meeting rooms that used to be for your own use.

This not only thins out your resources, the staff directly under you will blame you for not “protecting” them enough. You might even lose your cost center and have to share one with another department.

If you face such a scenario, either:

• you are not pulling your weight in meetings
• your bosses see you as a pushover
• or people at the top wants you to leave

You will have to feel out which is which.

8) You are being compared to newcomers

You can probably tell when a remark is just a joke, a sarcastic comment, or a stab in the back disguised as a passing remark.

But when you boss is declaring to the office that the newcomer is outperforming you by huge numbers, the unspoken words are “You need to buck up or leave!”.

The problem is that with the exception of sales positions, it is tough to judge who is outperforming who.

Even if a new salesman is doing better than you, there are other qualitative factors that you are contributing to operations like:

• spotting system bottlenecks and unclogging them
• mentoring rookies to help them settle in
• being a respected leader among a team of young guns
• being the corner stone of positive corporate culture

If you are disrespected by your superior in front of everyone by degrading your against a newbie, it says that whatever added value you bring to the table is not being appreciated.

Numbers are only what matter to your evil boss. And being the devil that he is, he most likely secretly wish that his sarcastic remarks will indirectly motivate you to leave your resignation letter on his desk tomorrow morning.

9) The corporate high flyer is sent to be your deputy

There are always people who are destined for great things. Whether they are really deserving because of their capabilities or because of stealthy nepotism is up to debate.

But when a superstar who has been effortlessly winning in the corporate version of snakes and ladders is appointed as your deputy, surely you know that your job is on the line. An enemy disguised as a friend is dangerous ground to walk on.

How do you put up with this?

On the surface, mask-wearing managers will insist that the high-flyer is sent to you so that you can mentor him, teach him the ropes of what is happening in your area of expertise, and help your department hit greater heights.

But seriously… you should know better than that.

He is there to duplicate you so that you can soon be deemed ready for transition to point #3!

And lastly,

The best way to counter these unscrupulous corporate behavior is to fight back from the start. Sometimes a strong rebuttal from the start can cause others to think twice before playing you. Because if you don’t, you are assumed to to have accepted it like the pushover they think you are.

Have you seen or experienced other methods companies try to get people to resign? Share in the comments section below.