Wave goodbye to Quiet Quitting and say hello to Quiet Hiring. This new trend is hot off the press from Gartner – the world’s leading research and advisory company! This trend first caught attention in their 2023 Future of Work Trends Report.
According to Emily Rose Mcrae, Senior Director of Research at Gartner, “Quiet hiring is a strategy companies are using to fill in holes without hiring new full-time employees.”
Amid economic uncertainty, organizations are counting their cards and playing them right. Rather than putting their finances and resources into new hires, they are investing more in their current employees.
Why is Quiet Hiring a trend?
Top tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, and Twitter chose to slow down hiring late last year. But that doesn’t necessarily mean their open roles aren’t getting filled or their priority projects aren’t getting completed.
Due to forced reduced staff budgets, companies struggle to acquire top talent. So, rather than hiring new recruits, they are investing their resources into their current talent pool – finding the silver lining amid economic uncertainty.
Simply put, Quiet Hiring is a matter of reframing. If executed correctly, it doesn’t only benefit businesses but gives current employees a new advantage. Workers who previously felt overlooked are now getting the spa treatment of the workplace. This new trend is helping employees fall in love with their jobs and company all over again.
Read the top benefits Quiet Hiring has for employees.
Supports employee retention and job security
Quiet Hiring supports employee retention. And with today’s current job market, that security matters. 
Employees who crave stability and career growth will love Quiet Hiring. It urges leaders to look deeper at their current talent and find ways to retain them. To do so, companies work to build strategies around a people-first workplace. A people-first culture is a company-wide approach that aims to recognize employees to help them feel more connected and motivated. Companies can create this culture by incorporating the following initiatives:
- Establish organization-wide alignment in your business processes
- Develop employee feedback opportunities
- Prioritize putting people first by recognizing contributions
- Give leaders strategies for establishing trust and empathy
- Encourage active employee engagement through real-time feedback
In the end, Quiet Hiring only works if companies retain their talent. Therefore, companies must ensure that employees feel valued. Workers that do are five times more likely to stay at their job.
Employees crave job security as much as Quiet Hiring seeks employee retention. But a toxic work culture can quickly unravel all of that. The bottom line, a little appreciation goes a long way.
Encourages learning new skills with on-the-job training
One of the main goals of Quiet Hiring is to fill in skills gaps created by quiet quitting, resignations, or disengaged employees. To accomplish this, companies are investing in upskilling – providing training programs and development opportunities to expand an employee’s abilities.
Most leaders evaluate their current teams and reallocate specific job tasks rather than add on workloads. However, any employees interested in extra work strategically receive equitable compensation. This additional compensation is still less than it would be for a new hire – thus, meeting new staff budgets.
Jordan Turner, Gartner’s Content Marketing Manager, claims, “For employees, upskilling is a good opportunity to modernize their skills and retain their market value.”
To properly build an upskilling program, employers should follow the below steps:
- Assess the skills your employees have today
- Determine the skills gaps you need to fill
- Select specific employees to upskill and ensure their buy-in
- Set upskilling goals per employee
- Assess what learning format is most suitable for each employee
- Design either in-house training or partner with an external training vendor
- Ensure training is completed during working hours
- Monitor the progress of employee(s) new skills
Upskilling empowers employees to build meaningful careers within their company. Not only does this improve employee retention, but overall employer approval rates. This on-the-job training is a win-win for everyone.
Offers career advancements and new role opportunities
Today’s hiring forecast may take nine months or more to fill a company’s open roles. With Quiet Hiring, organizations may reprioritize departments and shift workers from an employee-heavy department to one in need.
Mcrae elaborates, “The idea is that you have a finite amount of talent in your organization, and you need to make a call about where it’s going to have the best impact. In this case, you’re saying, ‘We’re going to intentionally deprioritize analytic support for HR and marketing for the next six months so that we can increase the productivity of our data science team, and we are saying this very explicitly. Everyone knows this.'”
Eptura is no exception to this Quiet Hiring trend. For example, Sidney Giguere, Eptura’s former Content Writer, was offered the role of Public Relations Specialist after she expressed interest to leadership.
Rather than feeling stagnant, Quiet Hiring offers employees career advancement and new role opportunities. If this tells us anything, it is that Quiet Hiring is the exact opposite of Quiet Quitting.
Employees fall in love with work
Do you know that wonderful feeling when a spark reignites a relationship? Quiet Hiring is that spark for the workplace. How employers are adapting to the current economy and job market is benefiting employees. And as a result, employees are falling in love with their jobs all over again.
If companies play their cards right, Quiet Hiring is a gift better than a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day.
