This, to me, sounds like he's pressuring people to leave, so that they don't have to fire them, which would involve severance.
What they are really trying to avoid is laying off the wrong people. Management is really bad at guessing who wants to stay and who wants out. Often, a bunch of “low performers” are riffed. Some are bad, some are just on the wrong team, some are having life complications- birth, death, divorce, etc.
It’s really bad PR to fire someone who is a low performer because of a bad pregnancy, grandma died, etc. especially when they call a reporter and show their stellar ratings from previous years.
On top of all that, with the rif comes a higher work load. At this time many high performers will quit, which sucks because you just laid off a bunch of people, many of whom were close to these guys in performance.
Then the company is at risk of making bad decisions. They they push even harder on those that remain? Do they become pragmatic and cut initiatives they can no longer staff?
All moves have risk.
The real purpose of the PIP process is to grind people down so they make mistakes, costing them what could otherwise be beautiful lawsuits [1], or just stop showing up (which I guess would fall under quitting, since they end up firing themselves, at least bureaucratically speaking).
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[1] This is surprisingly easy to do in the US. If you post about your termination on social media, this can be construed as "cause after the fact" and make a termination that was in fact unjust or unlawful now legal. The employer's argument becomes that they knew you held malice toward the company ("cause") but couldn't prove it--the social media activity becomes said "proof".
An employee who quits isnt eligible for unemployment.
(these rules obviously vary by country/state/etc)
Not quite true at Amazon, the most infamous PIP user. You get put on "Focus". If you fail that, you are offered severance or to go on a PIP. True, once you're on the PIP, you're not going to get a severance offer. (This is all according to https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/amazon, which is excerpted by the author here https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1537810787473006593.)