Workplace trends mold how we perceive and value opportunity and are often the catalyst of change. These trends start as popular patterns that can slowly become the new norms in the workplace. Companies must be aware of these trends to stay competitive in the market and relevant in the wider world. According to Gartner, the workplace trends that are set to dominate in 2023 include hybrid flexibility, AI in hiring to remove bias, sustainable performance, employee well-being, and quiet hiring among others (Source).
In this article, we will learn what is quiet hiring, explore its benefits, and understand the future of this trend.
What is Quiet Hiring?
Quiet hiring is the process of getting new talent without hiring new employees. No, this does not involve magic or cloning machines. But it does involve how companies strategically move employees from one department to another or assign employees new tasks that are unlike the tasks previously performed.
While implementing quiet hiring, companies are taking a strategic decision to allocate talent where they are most needed and remove them from an area where sacrifices can be made. Also, quiet hiring helps companies see through the tough period where demand for hard-to-fill roles increases and gives them enough time to redesign these roles. The roles are redesigned in a way that does not adversely affect the company if they need to move employees from one department to another.
For example, if a company needs to wait 6 months before two data scientists can join, they can ask some of the existing data analysts working in marketing and HR to move to IT. These data analysts can undergo training and crash courses to solve complex tasks that data scientists can resolve. By doing this, the company can take care of the task at hand and promote data analysts within the ranks.
Why is quiet hiring becoming popular?
Quiet hiring is a response from companies from the late 2022 trend of quiet quitting wherein employees did not put in the extra effort beyond their basic job responsibilities. Companies see it as an effective way to acquire new capabilities and skills without adding full-time employees. At the same time, companies are finding it useful to boost employee engagement and retain employees.
What is the benefit of quiet hiring for companies?
Companies can address immediate business needs by expanding the roles and responsibilities of existing employees. Apart from increasing employee responsibilities, companies can assign new roles to employees and give them a promotion or new job titles. At the same time, they can save money that goes into developing and implementing new hiring strategies.
However, companies must ensure that there are perks of doing new tasks to boost employee engagement and performance. If employees are putting in long hours and are not given any reward, there can be feelings of resentment towards work, and it can create a negative environment within the company. It’s important to provide discussion around overall workload, prioritization, and support through project management.
What is the benefit of quiet hiring for employees?
Employees get to learn new skills, gain more experience, upgrade their resumes, and test themselves in previously untested areas. Don’t just take our work for it, take it from SHRM in which their own article states, “temporary assignments can help employees gain new skills and experiences and lead to long-term career advancement.” Additionally, it increases employee engagement by giving them the chance to take existing skills forward that they are not actively using in their current job.
At the same time, employees must be assertive about their boundaries and the capacity of the work they can take at any given moment. By doing this, they can juggle multiple tasks without feeling overworked.
Future of quiet hiring
Currently, companies are in a competitive hiring landscape while facing an unstable future economy. Hiring managers and recruiters in these companies need to find staff for new tasks that come their way during this phase of cost-cutting and budget constraints. By leveraging quiet hiring, they can cut down on costs and allocate funds in other areas to grow their company. However, if they are not able to meet up the growing demand with existing talent then they will need to hire externally.
Quiet hiring will remain an important factor in the hiring strategies of different companies going forward. Companies can take to quiet hiring when it suits their hiring strategy and take to other hiring strategies when necessary. At the same time, there will be new trends that will come and go but companies will never want to let hardworking and talented employees leave.
How can SkillGigs help?
SkillGigs, a talent marketplace helps you hire skilled people from a diverse talent pool for different job roles. Companies can take data driving hiring decisions after checking SkillGigs 3D Resume – a visual overview of a candidate’s skill level and career history. SkillGigs advanced AI gives key insights into what tasks the candidate can and maybe undertake. This helps companies maximize the productivity of each candidate as soon as they hire through them SkillGigs. Furthermore, a complete direct sourcing program will help you manage the talent on hand with the ability to evaluate their total skill potential.
If you would like to learn more — no worries, it is why we built SkillGigs.com. Contact us to learn more.