What is Quiet Hiring?
The definition of quiet hiring
This year, a new HR buzzword is on the horizon called “quiet hiring”. Senior Director of Research at Gartner, Emily Rose McRae, describes it as a strategy to fill in holes within an organization without actually hiring new employees.
In 2022, the industry saw an emergence of the buzzword “quiet quitting,” which describes when employees put in minimum effort to keep their job but don’t go above and beyond for their employer.
According to McRae, “quiet hiring” can mean a number of things. This includes hiring short-term contractors or moving current employees into new roles within the organization or even turning part-time employees into full-time employees.
How quiet hiring can empower your employees
According to Gartner, they expect quiet hiring to take form in a few ways:
- Internal Mobility – a focus on internal mobility to provide employees with upward movement in the company without changing headcount.
- Stretch Assignments & Upskilling – a focus on providing employees with the ability to obtain new skill sets that can pave the way for more opportunities for growth. Maybe a current marketing employee is interested in public relations? Some of the marketing skills are transferable to public relations, so there could be an opportunity for growth and learning.
- Alternate Talent Sources – a focus on leveraging one’s professional network to only bring in talent as needed.
Benefits in the workplace
Quiet hiring has several benefits, such as upskilling and providing internal mobility.
Internal mobility happens when employees are given the opportunity to advance or evolve across roles. This could include changing their entire occupation or transferring into a management role.
Other benefits include extending employees’ careers and improving employee satisfaction. Organizations should prepare to offer incentives to encourage employees to take the leap. Incentives could include additional PTO, one-time bonus offers and extra time-off.
What causes quiet hiring?
In general, hiring usually occurs for a few reasons. These reasons include creating new job roles to address a company’s growth, replacing an employee (backfilling), or addressing an immediate need within the organization. Usually, quiet hiring is caused by the last reason, even though it doesn’t generally require any new hiring at all.
The downsides
However, the potential downside of this new HR buzzword is the assumption that employees’ roles and job responsibilities could change with little to no transparency from the organization.
Employers should be communicative and transparent about employees stepping into new roles. This is especially true if the new role could be seen as a significant increase in responsibility. So make sure to be responsible and forthcoming regarding any changes.
Quiet hiring just got easier — see how we’re innovating internal mobility solutions by requesting a demo.
