In Japan I think the phrase is called Window Gazing -- the employee &#x2F; victim is provided an office with a nice view (presumably of things they could be doing instead of draining resources from the company) and left to draw their own conclusion.<p>In Australia many years ago -- early to mid 1990&#x27;s -- we had a spate of large public organisations being privatised, with a predictably large number of HR casualties.  There was typically a brief queueing system, as some token effort at redeployment was considered ... but in reality once you&#x27;d been side-moted to a Window Gazer role, you know precisely where you stood.<p>The phrase used locally was &#x27;being led into &#x2F; sitting around in Flight Deck&#x27; -- that being the name of the frequent flyer awards club of one of our two major airlines at the time.  (That airline&#x27;s completely gone now -- make of that what you will.)