How to get people to resign

Without torching the organisation or losing your best employees.

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The gut reaction that a manager has when an employee announces his or her resignation is telling. Sometimes it is genuine dismay: The person leaving is a star. Sometimes, disappointment is mixed with irritation at having to recruit and train a replacement. And sometimes, it is relief: the human resources equivalent of a pebble being removed from your shoe.

For Mr Elon Musk and his acolytes at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), employees of the federal government in America are pebbles all the way down. On January 28th, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent an e-mail to roughly two million workers offering them "deferred resignation", the chance to resign and get paid until the end of September.

The legality of this offer is uncertain (on February 12th, a judge allowed it to proceed). So is the end-goal: Bosses often use voluntary redundancy as a consensual way to cut headcount, but the assumption is usually that they want the organisation itself to survive. Still, the episode raises an interesting question: Is there a good way to get workers to resign?

The openness of the OPM's deferred-resignation offer is in its favour. Bosses have long adopted underhand tactics to encourage individuals to quit rather than have to sack them.