Organizational structures have traditionally focused on empowering employees to work exclusively in their specialist role – but this may no longer be the smartest approach for organizations that want to maximize their capacity and boost productivity against a backdrop of economic uncertainty and with many organizations shedding headcount, upskilling and cross-skilling look set to be key strategic imperatives this year.
A new phenomenon, dubbed ‘quiet hiring,’ where organizations redeploy new skills from their existing workforce rather than recruiting new hires, is gathering momentum—with Gartner predicting it to be one of the top workforce predictions for 2023. But will quiet hiring be the answer to boosting productivity this year?
The antithesis to ‘quiet quitting’
The trend of ‘quiet quitting’ emerged late in 2022, when a significant number of employees (particularly among younger demographics such as Gen Z) actively professed to be doing the bare minimum required to retain their jobs and eschewing all tasks beyond their assigned duties. At the end of last year, one in three UK employees considered themselves quiet quitters, according to research from BetterUP. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report found the level of employee engagement even more alarming, with a mere 9 percent of UK workers feeling enthused by their work and workplace. How can business leaders stimulate enthusiasm among these jaded employees?
In the current economic climate, quiet hiring makes a lot of sense. It allows business leaders to eliminate costly recruitment and additional salary costs by filling roles with existing talent within the organization. But quiet hiring isn’t just a money-saving exercise; when done well, it can enhance the prospects of existing staff by offering them some key advantages.
It allows employees to increase their skills portfolio through training and try out working on new areas of the business without losing the stability of their current role. It also opens doors to promotions and roles that might typically be filled through external recruitment. Organizations that embrace quiet hiring by flexing resources to offer a more varied range of tasks and responsibilities can boost employee morale, provide a more stimulating and rewarding workplace environment, and reduce attrition rates.
Of course, there will be some people who are quite happy to continue in their usual roles and may be skeptical of their managers requiring them to take on additional tasks. However, a survey carried out in the US by job-search platform Monster found more people open to quiet hiring than against it. The survey showed that 63 percent of employees are amenable to the idea, believing it a good opportunity to expand their skill sets.
Crucially, a more engaged and fulfilled workforce will positively affect customer experience, operational efficiency, and productivity. And there has never been a more pressing time for American enterprises to focus on improving their scores against these priorities. The United States avoided succumbing to a recession at the end of last year by the narrowest of margins, but stagnation in productivity is one of the biggest challenges facing the US economy today.
For example, the situation is particularly worrying in the financial services sector. According to our recent study, OpsTracker: The Performance Tracker for Operations in Financial Services Q1 report, operational efficiency in UK and Ireland slumped from 57 percent at the pandemic peak to just 47.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022—a massive 16.7 percent decline, with organizations today operating at a significantly lower standard than both before and during the pandemic.
The capacity conundrum
A common drain on productivity is that capacity is being squandered; businesses are not getting the most out of their current workforce. This problem exists for organizations across sectors, but in the financial sector alone, a recent industry study by ActiveOps revealed that more than half (55 percent) of UK and Irish operations professionals recognize that there is spare capacity—but don’t know where it is nor how to access it.
The problem stems from teams working in traditional structures and in silos focused on specific functional areas of a business. Since they do not have the flexibility or the team capabilities to move workloads between teams, businesses struggle to cope with fluctuations and cannot balance the load. The same study found that almost two-thirds of organizations (63 percent) believe they need to cross-skill or upskill as they weather the current economic turmoil.
So, it’s unsurprising that quiet hiring will be a key trend this year. But how do organizations go about implementing it? How can they be sure they are upskilling in the areas that offer the most value to workers and the organization?
The first step is to identify the roadblocks and capacity issues across the business. Only by collating and analyzing data on current capacity can leaders tackle workload imbalances at the root and ensure they invest in training the right people and making changes that will have a lasting impact on the organization’s success.
Will quiet hiring become the norm in the workplace of the future?
Suppose organizations embrace this latest ‘quiet’ trend and move to operational structures where teams share a broader range of skills. In that case, they will make themselves more agile and better placed to survive and thrive despite the current economic challenges. With the economic downturn and pressures to reduce costs while retaining and attracting talent, quiet hiring provides organizations with a winning tactic. And like other trends that have proved fruitful, such as remote working, there is no reason why quiet hiring shouldn’t continue to become the new ‘quiet keeping’ in the future workplace.
