What is Quiet Hiring and What Does it Mean for Employers?

“Quiet hiring” is a new buzzword that is circling around the hiring industry. Gartner listed quiet hiring first in its “Future of Work” trends for 2023 and Google Trends shows searches reached peak interest in the first week of this year. This term describes employers utilizing internal mobility, or movement of employees within an organization, to fill holes in their workforce without adding new employee headcount. This can include moving employees laterally into new roles, promoting workers or re-distributing responsibilities to existing team members. While the concept is not necessarily new, this trend has benefits, and challenges, for both employers and employees.

Georgianna Rhoda, Director of Recruiting at Hunter International, has over a decade of recruitment expertise. She explains this new phenomenon, “For employers who are facing tighter recruitment budgets and having difficulty finding quality talent for their teams, quiet hiring can help fill skills gaps without breaking the bank.” She continues, “While upskilling and internal mobility can bring benefits such as improved retention and engagement, it means employers may have to do more to strategically invest in their current workforce.”

Read on for ways that employers can make quiet hiring beneficial for both their organization and their employees.

How Employers Can Leverage Quiet Hiring

The quiet hiring initiative presents an opportunity for employers to engage their current teams while reaching their productivity goals. To leverage this trend, organizational leaders will need to make thoughtful actions with their employees. First, they will need to assess the qualifications and interests of their workforce. Through 360-degree reviews, manager and peer feedback as well as skill assessments, leaders can identify the strengths of their team members. They also can utilize surveys and conduct employee interviews to be able gauge the interests and career goals of their employees. By taking account of worker strengths and goals, employers can increase engagement and excitement about internal mobility while preventing frustrations from employees about a change in work.

Second, employers should consider investing in training and development of employees. Not only has effective training and development been linked to employee engagement and satisfaction, it also can help employees feel prepared for whatever new roles or responsibilities they may take on. Offering these opportunities can demonstrate to employees that you are supporting them in their new role and investing in their professional career growth.

Lastly, employers should be transparent about the initiatives they are taking to advance their current teams. If managers are clued in on these changes, they will be able to identify potential leaders, recognize employee strengths and gauge overall sentiment that will be helpful for the organization’s leadership team when making internal mobility moves. Companies who promote their internal focus, rather than hide it, can highlight the benefits and positive changes that employees can expect to see coming up.

Challenges of Quiet Hiring

While there are many benefits of quiet hiring, there are also some skepticisms about this new trend. For example, while it has been shown that employees feel valued when their professional development is invested in, adding more tasks onto their daily duties rather than hire more resources can lead to frustration and burnout. In some cases, employees may not want to take on additional tasks, or be moved into a new role. In others, employees may be willing to take on more work, but may get burned out as time moves on.

To avoid this, employers can utilize open communication between managers and employees to ensure that tasks are evenly distributed, and employees are not overwhelmed. Managers can set consistent touchpoints with employees to check-in on their progress and discuss any challenges they may be facing. Additionally, supporting teams with training and development opportunities can ensure that as time progresses, employees feel properly trained for their change in duties.

Additionally, not every workforce gap will be able to be filled by internal resources. When this is the case, turn to hiring experts (like us!) to help your team attract, interview and hire the best talent for your organization. This will allow you to maximize your recruiting budget, hire quality talent into your roles quickly and keep your internal teams focused on their other tasks.

—

Interested in learning more? Contact our team today to learn more about Hunter’s custom hiring solutions!