Amber Minogue

What is quiet hiring?

Thanks for asking.

After the emergence of quiet quitting, it's now the turn of quiet hiring and although the term is relatively new, the practice is not.

Where does it come from?

The term quiet hiring first appeared in the report Nine Future of Work Trends for 2023, published at the end of 2022 by Emily McRae, a philosophy professor in New Mexico, USA.

She explains that this phenomena follows on from the quiet quitting craze that emerged in 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a huge wave of resignations sweep the country, with nearly 4 million people quitting their jobs every month during this period.

Quiet quitters complained that their workload was too heavy for their salary and that managers were unclear about their tasks or workload, rewarding the best performance and thus pushing them to work more.

But what does this have to do with quiet hiring?

Due to the high level of resignations, internal shortages within companies led them to promote people from within the organisation rather than hire someone new.

According to a study published in 2023 by Cornerstone, 73% of employees want to know about development opportunities within their company.

But what really characterises quiet hiring is the quiet aspect of it, which employees sometimes criticise for being too opaque.

HR justifies this by explaining that secrecy is essential when replacing or changing jobs following a quiet quitting.

But doesn't it open up more opportunities?

Yes, of course.

Quiet hiring helps employees who've been with the company for some time to develop and rewards their effort.

It also enables them to learn new skills.

For both the company and the employee, quiet hiring is a source of motivation and helps to improve trust between the two.

But this method of recruitment is the subject of debate because it creates many inequalities.

For some, they feel like they are obliged to take on the work of a colleague that has left, giving them more work than they can handle.

While for others, it feels that they've not been given the same opportunity to develop and expand their work as no actual recruitment has taken place.