Quiet Hiring, A New Workplace Trend Is Helping Companies. Here's How

The corporate sector has witnessed numerous workplace trends including great resignation, quiet quitting, moonlighting and rage applying. However, all of it is expected to be replaced by "quiet hiring", a fad that has already begun to rule the employment industry.

Amid mass-layoffs by tech companies, "quiet hiring" has gained prominence as it refers to a method of finding new talent without hiring new full-time employees. It was named one of the nine workplace trends of the year by the technical consulting and research company Gartner.

According to the company, "Quiet hiring enables organizations to strategically address acute, immediate business needs by assigning existing employees to new roles, expanding existing employees' responsibilities through stretch and upskilling opportunities by hiring temporary workers to perform specific tasks or any combination of the three." This entails carefully evaluating the talent companies already have on hand and making trade-offs on where talent is most required and where the firm can afford to slow down production or reduce staff. 

For example, in order to meet its goals for the year, a company may determine that it needs to add five more data scientists to its team. It may then look at the hiring forecast and realise that filling those five roles could take up to several months, implying that they will not meet their targets. As a solution, the company may decide to temporarily transfer five employees from another department, such as data analysts in human resources and marketing, into the five open data scientist positions, which is known as quiet hiring.

According to Gartner, quiet hiring is also beneficial for employees as it allows them to work on challenging assignments, expand their current skills, learn new skills and advance their careers. All this will ultimately lead to the employee becoming indispensable for their current organisation and more marketable to others. However, the research firm also adds that the companies should be "expected to offer incentives, such as additional compensation, one-time bonuses, extra personal time off, flexible hours and working conditions" to avoid attrition. 

Also Read: After 'Quiet Quitting', 'Rage Applying' Is The New Workplace Trend Among Employees

According to Inc, tech giant Google was actively involved in quiet hiring in 2022. The company's hiring strategy "doesn't look just to internal candidates to fill positions but it does look to internal staff when considering external candidates."

Emily Rose McRae, Senior Director of Research at Gartner, told ABC News, "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." According to her, the difference between the new trend and giving employees extra work instead of recruiting more people is that quiet hiring involves a company openly discussing with employees about its goals and temporarily shifting them to areas that serve those priorities.