It's a common joke in situations like this. The form I'm familiar with is "the beatings will continue until morale improves". The saying is used to call out self-defeating treatment of a company's employees: that beatings hurt rather than help morale is the point.
It's a riff on the old joke, 'the beatings will continue until morale improves.' It suggests that the problems are caused by poor management practices and has no deeper meaning.