You've likely heard of the term quiet quitting, but what about the other side of the scale of quiet hiring?
It's a recruitment strategy that helps companies to fill skill gaps without going through the full hiring process. It helps save valuable time and resources.
There are a few different approaches to quiet hiring, but the term typically focuses on leveraging existing talent and expertise, instead of bringing in new people.
If you've ever taken on additional responsibilities or transitioned into a different department to fill a gap, you've been part of the quiet hiring trend. It helps companies to quickly plug gaps, without the lengthy recruitment process.
But what does that mean for the employees who are part of that process?
We look into that, why it is becoming increasingly popular and the process of quiet hiring so you can understand more about the term and why everything has to be so quiet!
What is quiet hiring?
Quiet hiring
Quiet hiring is an internal talent management strategy where organisations assign new responsibilities to existing employees based on business needs rather than creating new positions or backfilling old ones.
It involves redistributing work across teams and using the skills of current employees to fill organisational gaps.
The process happens in three primary ways:
- Internal role shifts: Moving employees to different departments or projects
- Skill expansion: Adding new responsibilities to existing roles
- Cross-functional collaboration: Temporary team assignments across departments
There are a few key characteristics of quiet hiring:
- No formal job postings or recruitment processes
- Focus on internal talent development
- Emphasis on practical experience over formal qualifications
- Flexible role boundaries
- Project-based assignments
Quiet hiring allows organisations to quickly adapt to changes in the market but still keep operational efficiency.
This means that if you're in the middle of your hectic busy period and one of your key team members leaves, you won't be left high and dry. You'll be able to redistribute their workload and bring in the skills of other teammates to fill the gap.
It's also a great strategy when hiring freezes are in place or there are constraints with the budget.
Why is quiet hiring trending?
When we experienced lots of economic uncertainty in 2023, the market was impacted and one of the things we saw come out of that is the rise in quiet hiring.
In 2023, there were a lot of layoffs, and we're talking A LOT. In the tech industry alone 262,682 people lost their jobs in the US, with a total of 1,186 companies having to let people go [SOURCE].
When there is a lot of uncertainty out there about which way the market is going to go, it's no wonder companies were putting hiring freezes in place and having to deal with budget constraints.
For those who had to make the difficult decision to lay off staff, they had to deal with the same workload but with fewer resources to meet that demand. Not to mention the new gap in skills in the company after individuals, teams and even departments were dissolved.
That's where quiet hiring began to shine. When you have a demand to keep up with but with minimal resources to match that, you have to find alternative ways to stop your company from going under and still be agile in the market.
The popularity of quiet hiring hasn't come out of nowhere or appeared without reason. It's a response to a string of social and economic shifts pointing industries to try more innovative and different approaches to keeping up with demand.
As the economic world is ever-changing, we're certain quiet hiring will be here to stay.
Benefits of Quiet Hiring
Quiet hiring has serious advantages for both employers and employees. We look at both below.
Benefits for employers
Quiet hiring allows organisations to cut back on costs by reducing recruitment expenses, including advertising fees, agency commissions and onboarding costs.
The average time-to-hire (T2H) in the UK is six weeks, with complex technical or senior roles taking even longer to fill.
Quiet hiring allows you quicker access to essential skills, which in turn increases organisational efficiency and productivity.
Here's how employers benefit:
- Reduced training time: Internal candidates require 50% less onboarding time due to already knowing the company
- Enhanced productivity: Teams can keep momentum and flow without disruptions from external hiring processes
- Improved retention: When an employee knows there are more opportunities to step into senior roles, they're more likely to stick around which improves employee retention and reduces attrition rates
- Risk mitigation: Internal candidates come with fewer hiring risks as you already know how they work and how they'll get on in a new role
- Knowledge preservation: Key knowledge of the company and internal processes stays within the organisation
- Cultural alignment: Existing employees already understand company values and practices and know the culture
- Flexible resource allocation: It allows you to be more flexible when projects or departments have a large skill gap.
- Employees stay within the company: Instead of losing employees to other roles, you can help shape their employee experience by growing and expanding their roles, which is a win for employers
Benefits for employees
Quiet hiring isn't just beneficial for employers. Employees can gain from being in a company that practices quiet hiring.
These are the benefits for employees:
- Skill diversification: Exposure to new responsibilities and business areas that possibly wouldn't happen if all roles were filled
- Career acceleration: Faster progression and more opportunities through hands-on experience in different roles, which can change your career trajectory
- Job security: Increased value to the organisation through expanded capabilities
- Network expansion: Building relationships across departments and functions
- Learning opportunities: Access to mentorship and knowledge transfer from experienced colleagues
- Portfolio development: Creation of diverse project experience without changing employers
- Compensation growth: Internal moves should mean an increase in salary, as the company is saving money overall from not having to spend on recruiters
Disadvantages of Quiet Hiring in the workplace
As with all things, there must be a downside. These are the potential drawbacks of quiet hiring for both businesses and employees.
Challenges for employers
Implementing quiet hiring means there may be some more complexities for HR to take on. For example, tracking expanded responsibilities across departments which if not done correctly, can lead to compensation disparities and role ambiguity.
These are some other challenges to be mindful of:
- Maintaining accurate performance metrics for employees with evolving roles
- Managing employee burnout from increased responsibilities
- Addressing salary equity issues between traditional and quiet-hired positions
- Coordinating cross-departmental schedules and priorities
- Ensuring compliance with labour regulations when modifying job duties
Challenges for employees
A lot of employees will have either experienced elements of quiet hiring in the past or know someone who has. It sometimes looks like taking on new responsibilities when a team member leaves and sometimes can lead to working additional hours to accommodate.
Critical concerns include:
- Compensation misalignment with expanded responsibilities. Make sure that if your role changes, you're reimbursed for the new responsibility
- Limited time for skill development while managing existing duties
- Unclear career progression paths
- Work-life balance disruption
- Role identity confusion
- Reduced job satisfaction from involuntary role changes
- Decreased focus on core expertise
All of these can be detrimental if not managed effectively.
The Process of Quiet Hiring
Quiet hiring follows a structured approach that uses internal talent development with strategic resource allocation. There are a few ways to do this:
Cross-training existing employees
This means upskilling and training employees to expand their knowledge of the business and different roles.
It starts with skills mapping, where managers find 3 to 4 core competencies needed for each department and then train employees on those skills.
This is done through:
- Job shadowing sessions with experienced team members
- Rotation programmes across different departments
- Online learning modules focused on specific skills
- Mentorship pairings with senior staff members
- Hands-on project experience in new areas
The cross-training schedule should be 8-12 weeks long, with employees spending 20% of their time learning new skills while maintaining their primary responsibilities.
Make sure to track progress through monthly assessments to ensure skill development is on track with key benchmarks.
Leveraging project-based freelancers
Project-based freelancers (temporary workers, gig workers, whatever you'd like to call them) work perfectly with internal talent to fill temporary skill gaps as well as bring other benefits.
The integration process includes:
- Skills assessment to identify specific expertise requirements
- Creating project-specific scopes with clear deliverables
- Establishing knowledge transfer protocols
- Setting up collaboration frameworks with internal teams
- Implementing milestone-based performance tracking
The great thing with freelancers is that they can easily plug the missing skill gaps with their expertise and insights and you can find people with the exact skills you need.
They usually don't need extensive additional training, are available to work flexible hours and only need a minimal amount of interviews before starting.
They're a great fix for HR leaders when they have a current job description that needs to be filled by external candidates.
Companies typically have a curated network of 5-10 trusted freelancers per department, ensuring quick access to specialised skills when needed.
Conclusion: The answer to plugging skill gaps at companies
Quiet hiring is a transformative approach to talent management that's reshaping how organisations utilise their workforce. By focusing on internal capabilities and skill development you'll find opportunities to grow your team, without having to spend time and money on recruitment.
Success in quiet hiring depends on clear communication, transparent processes and a commitment to continuous learning. When implemented thoughtfully it can create a dynamic workplace where both organizations and workers can achieve their goals efficiently.
Quiet hiring is more than just a workplace trend; it's a sustainable practice that allows companies to be more adaptable in the ever-changing economy.
So, keep this in your toolbelt for the next time you're looking to fill a role or skill gap in your team.
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