Is quiet hiring the antidote to quiet quitting?
Every now and then I come across a new concept in hiring that seems to defy all logic and conventional wisdom. So you can imagine my initial response when I saw ‘quiet hiring’ for the first time. It seems like an oxymoron. How could it possibly be beneficial to hire quietly?
However, having delved a little deeper, I discovered that this trend – while inaccurately named – links to many of the themes that I’ve covered so far in Recruitment Tech Weekly. And it dovetails with a skills-first approach to work and hiring, which is what motivated me to found PitchMe.
So to provide a thorough understanding of this newest trend in hiring, and to measure why it has become significant and if it’s here to stay, let’s answer the following questions:
Quiet hiring – the latest HR trend
It’s perhaps a reflection of these tumultuous times that barely a week passes in recruitment without a new term surfacing that represents an emerging trend in employer or employee behaviour. In recent times we’ve experienced ‘the great resignation’, ‘job cuffing’, ‘workforce pixelation', ‘quiet quitting’, and now ‘quiet hiring’.
I’m as curious to know who comes up with these names as I am to know what they refer to. Perhaps we could trace them back to the same IP address… But that’s something for another time.
So what is quiet hiring? Well, it’s impossible to explain quiet hiring without first explaining ‘quiet quitting’ – as the latter led to the former.
Quiet quitting
You no doubt will have seen the term quiet quitting before it appeared a couple of paragraphs ago. And you’ll probably remember it going viral on LinkedIn last year around the same time that a Gallop poll revealed that “‘Quiet quitters’ make up at least 50% of the US workforce – probably more.”
This alarmingly widespread phenomenon can be defined as employees refusing to do anything beyond the minimum requirements of their jobs. Rather than becoming actively disengaged, they simply stop going above and beyond for their employer.
Becoming embedded in the industry conscious in the latter half of last year, quiet quitting is seen by employers as having a negative impact on business. With quiet quitting “organisations keep people but lose skills and capabilities,” HR experts Gartner explains.
According to SHRM research, 51% of HR professionals are concerned about quiet quitting. And when it comes to concerns that quiet quitting will have a negative influence on their business, reducing employee morale in the workplace, that figure jumps to 83%.
Others don’t see it as either positive or negative. Anthony Klotz, a management professor at University College London and the person who coined the term ‘great resignation’ (at least we know where that one came from), thinks the motivating factors behind it are more nuanced.
In this post on LinkedIn, he explains that workers who feel their employer is invested in them will naturally go the extra mile. Whereas those that feel undervalued and underappreciated will not. He says, though, that quiet quitting should be framed as a communication opportunity for leaders.
The causes of quiet quitting
As for the overarching causes of quiet quitting, or indeed why it became such a huge part of the conversation – it’s a matter of much debate. There are many that see it as a knee-jerk reaction to the turmoil and daily trudge that was part and parcel of working during the pandemic.
For example, employees had seen the lines blurred between their professional and personal lives as a result of working from home. Therefore to avoid burnout and as a pushback against their employers, they reverted to doing the minimum.
Others, though, see quiet quitting as simply a new term for an old trend. Something that was traditionally known as ‘working to rule’. This article by Fortune explains that it’s been happening for decades. And data from the Gallop poll backs up that notion. It shows that, since 2000, the percentage of workers reporting that they’re either engaged or actively disengaged has consistently accounted for 40-50% of the US workforce. That means the remaining 50-60% reported they were ‘not engaged’ – these are the quiet quitters.
An unintended result of remote working
Interestingly, many cite unintended consequences of remote work as the driving force behind the most recent tranche of quiet quitting. The shift to more flexible models of working was supposed to reduce stress and burnout. But evidence suggests it might’ve had to opposite effect.
A Denver University survey shows that employees experience more stress when working from home. That links the earlier point about the blurred lines between personal and professional time. When working from home, employees found that their hours increased by up to 25% – they often weren't logging off until 8pm. And this has been shown to lead to burnout, especially among Gen Z workers.
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Remote work as a growing cause of quiet quitting is a thesis echoed by this Washington Post article. It agrees that in many cases the geographical distance between employee and employer has come to symbolise the gap between each party’s ideal working arrangement.
The article also goes one further, suggesting that as employees are quiet quitting, employers have been engaging in ‘quiet firing’. Basically offering the bare minimum in terms of support and compensation while piling on the demands. The result is a kind of standoff whereby both parties are “daring one another to end the work relationship.”
I can say with a degree of confidence that quiet quitting isn’t a new phenomenon, nor is it getting significantly more commonplace. But, I’d risk simplifying a complex and nuanced issue to attempt to pin it on one cause.
However, the evidence does suggest that remote working arrangements are increasingly becoming the primary reason why workers quiet quit. And it’s by analysing this and the other contributing factors that many employers landed on quiet hiring as a means to tackle the issue.
How does quiet hiring solve quiet quitting?
It’s important to say that quiet hiring has nothing to do with hiring. So I can put to bed my earlier concerns relating to how counter-intuitive it would be to hire talent without conducting the deepest and furthest (and loudest) search possible.
Instead, quiet hiring is an internal strategy that promotes talent mobility within the organisational structure. It does this by encouraging existing employees to take on more responsibilities and engage in more learning and development opportunities outside of their roles. We’re seeing this more frequently in skills-based strategies like ‘workplace pixelation’, which I’ve discussed before in this newsletter.
The result is that, through these experiential opportunities, employees gain new skills and capabilities, which in turn add to the overall skills and capabilities of the workforce.
Now at first glance, it might seem as though the benefits of quiet hiring are weighted heavily in favour of employers. They retain or gain those skills that might’ve been lost through quiet quitting without having to dip into their recruitment budgets. And you may be sceptical about this initiative’s potential to re-engage with those that feel burned out, undervalued, or disconnected from their work or their team.
The data, though, tells a different story. A poll by Monster shows that 63% of workers are agreeable to the idea of quiet hiring. They see it as a great opportunity to expand their skill set and improve their future career prospects. Furthermore, 39% see it as an opportunity to 'spread their wings' as opposed to 27% who would consider quitting if they were quiet hired.
If done properly, with employers approaching it in a transparent and inclusive way, quiet hiring, like workforce pixelation, can provide workers with a much-needed motivational and aspirational boost whilst reversing the impact of quiet quitting for businesses.
Obviously, for recruiters, this approach is another challenge to overcome in 2023, as companies that opt to quiet hire will naturally spend less on hiring.
Is quiet hiring the only solution?
The impact of quiet hiring on recruitment may yet be minimal, however. Whilst it sits at number one on Gartner’s list of 9 Future of Work Trends for 2023, I see it as an interlocking part of an overall mosaic of strategies that employers will need to adopt to improve employee retention, increase skills within their existing workforce and reduce spending on new hires.
Rather than simply incentivising employees with more experiential opportunities, employers will have to put more emphasis on making their workers feel valued. As veteran recruiter Adam Karpiak says in this post: “Instead of complaining about ‘quiet quitting’ companies should focus on ‘loud retaining’.”
Employer branding will also become an ever-more important tool against the effects of quiet quitting this year. As this article by EmployerBranding.tech predicts, in 2023 a company’s EVP will become an ecosystem of values, support, and recognition; not just a set of benefits.
By clearly defining their values and aligning them with leadership actions and the company culture, employers will be more likely to capitalise on a workforce that’s prepared to act in their best interests.
As always, there’s also room for more communication. As Anthony Klotz suggested, quiet quitting is an opportunity to recalibrate the relationship between management and employees.
According to data gathered by the Harvard Business Review, quiet quitting typically has less to do with a worker's willingness to work more inventively and more to do with a manager's capacity to forge bonds with staff members. So in a sense, the reskilling element of quiet hiring extends to management too, as it will help them respond to the challenges of a more flexible working environment.
So what’s the future of quiet hiring?
As I said above, there isn’t a single solution to the enduring issue of quiet quitting. Employers will have to think more broadly about how they rise to the challenges of a more fragmented and less engaged workforce. But the good news is there are numerous and well-documented strategies to combat it – like the ones outlined above.
It’s also worth noting that, as with quiet quitting, quiet hiring may not be such a new strategy. The results from the Monster poll show that a massive 80% of workers have already been quiet hired. So it almost seems certain that we’re talking about an existing solution to an existing problem – both of which have simply been through a recent viral-friendly rebrand.