In the competitive game of talent acquisition, not every key player is found through the traditional means of hiring. Sometimes, the right person is already working in your organization and just needs some upskilling or reskilling. Enter “quiet hiring”, a relatively new termed talent strategy that is gaining popularity as a strategic play for helping companies strengthen their workforce without the hassles of long recruitment cycles.
Quiet hiring shifts HR’s focus toward developing internal talent and strategically reassigning employees to new roles or departments. This approach also emphasizes bringing in specialized contractors and leveraging temporary workers to fill skill gaps instead of new permanent hires. In this blog, we’ll look at some of the benefits of quiet hiring, why it’s gaining momentum, and explore some real-world examples of how companies are using it to stay agile and ahead of the talent management curve.
The Many Benefits of Quiet Hiring
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that replacing an employee costs an organization, on average, the equivalent of six to nine months of their salary. This includes expenses like recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training, and lost productivity during the transition. For an employee making $60,000 per year, that works out to be $30,000 to $45,000 in recruiting and training costs.
Quiet hiring offsets the high price of recruitment while encouraging the employees that you already know and trust to stay and advance their career, which is also key for succession planning. Investing in your current people can also improve manager-employee relationships and give a voice to entry-level employees. As individuals are promoted, they can advocate for their colleagues and ensure they get what they need to thrive.
When your team sees that leadership is open to internal promotions, it can also be motivating for them. Developing existing team members by cross training and upskilling fosters a culture of innovation and agility that brings fresh perspectives and new ideas across departments. With all these benefits, it might be time to rethink some components of your talent strategy! Next, we’ll look at some examples of corporations making quiet hiring work for them.
Quiet Hiring in Action: 3 Real-World Examples
According to Talent Tech, 76% of companies recognize the importance of internal talent mobility, but only 6% believe they are effectively transitioning employees into new roles. Quiet hiring can be a powerful approach but implementing it in a real corporate setting is easier said than done.
Below are some great ways that top companies are utilizing the concept of quiet hiring to their advantage.
Google: Internal Talent Mobility
Google is known for its innovative approach to talent management. Instead of recruiting new hires, Google will take existing employees and reassign them to different roles or move them to another project. According to Business Insider, an engineer from the Search team might transition to work on AI in Google Cloud or join the YouTube team to develop new content algorithms. This internal mobility helps retain top talent while filling skill gaps efficiently.
Deloitte: Using Contractors for Specific Projects
Deloitte is known for taking on highly specialized projects and has been applying quiet hiring tactics for years. Rather than hiring full-time employees for every new consulting gig, they bring in temporary experts on a short-term basis in addition to moving around their full-time employees to meet the needs of the project. This approach is flexible, cost-effective, and allows Deloitte to scale its workforce up or down based on the expectations of the client.
Walmart: Seasonal and Cross-Training Plan
Retail giant Walmart often cross-trains employees to jump into different roles as business needs change. According to HR Dive, during the pandemic, Walmart reassigned corporate employees to fulfillment and delivery roles to handle the spike in online orders. This internal redeployment ensured that important operations continued running smoothly without requiring an extensive hiring process.
Another example of Walmart’s cross-training approach? Employees who prepare fresh food are also trained to maintain pricing and standards in their area. This provides people with a broader skill set, allowing them to help customers while giving themselves more room for career and pay growth.
Embracing talent mobility and quiet hiring is an excellent way to optimize an existing workforce—think of it as internal diversification! As remote jobs, globalization, and the gig economy continue to surge, smart HR teams will adapt with new talent management approaches and be better for it.
If you’re not sure where to start with a new talent mobility plan, our experts at Gameplan HR™ can help. As the relationship between employer and employee evolves, we provide solutions that elevate people over paperwork and help create amazing workplaces that employees love. Connect with an expert today, we’d love to hear from you!