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  • We’ve heard it all. From quiet quitting to quiet firing, there are plenty of new buzzwords that business owners should familiarize themselves with. In the realm of talent acquisition, a new approach known as “quiet hiring” has been generating significant buzz and reshaping traditional recruitment practices. Quiet hiring challenges conventional sourcing and selecting candidates, offering a fresh perspective on how organizations can attract top talent.

    What Is Quiet Hiring?

    Quiet hiring is the idea that a business can add new skills and fill gaps without hiring new full-time employees. It can come in two different forms: internal and external. Depending on the situation, it can involve internally restructuring teams by reskilling existing employees or externally hiring short-term contractors to meet specific needs, resulting in increased workforce flexibility and retention.

    Internal Vs. External Quiet Hiring

    Internal quiet hiring is when current employees temporarily move to another role or take on different organizational assignments. The hiring process is long, with an average of 24 days from the first interview to hire, causing stress not only on you but also on your team, who may be juggling many responsibilities at once. Internal quiet hiring allows you to restructure your team by reskilling and upskilling your existing employees while avoiding costly and frustrating hiring processes.

    Simultaneously, internal quiet hiring is an excellent way to invest in your staff. By training current employees, you assist their professional development, making them more marketable in an ever-competitive workforce. But don’t let this deter you; it doesn’t mean your employees will leave your business. In fact, data shows that employees who feel invested in are more engaged, report hiring job satisfaction, and are 34% more likely to stay with their employer.

    External quiet hiring, on the other hand, is the process of hiring short-term contractors to keep the business running without hiring more full-time employees. This involves proactively vetting well-established contractors, freelancers, or other talent who can fill in whenever necessary.

    Benefits Of Quiet Hiring

    While quiet hiring has existed for some time, it’s become increasingly popular since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Because of the competitive job market and labor shortage across industries, quiet hiring could be the right solution for you to ensure workplace efficiency without causing financial strain. The following are potential benefits of implementing quiet hiring within your business:

    • Provides employees with a reason to care more about their job
    • Equips workers with professional development opportunities 
    • Promotes collaboration and cross-functional teams 
    • Assists with succession planning
    • Establishes a continuous learning culture 
    • Makes companies more agile and ready to take on change 
    • Saves resources by not spending money on training and onboarding new staff 

    In addition, quiet hiring impacts the job market by cutting down on job eliminations. Instead of letting employees go because their job is no longer cost-effective, companies can retrain and move them elsewhere to make an impact.

    Potential Risks And Drawbacks

    One of the most significant risks of quiet hiring is the potential knowledge gap if employees were to leave. The departure of a team member handling niche or multiple responsibilities within your business could lead to the loss of crucial organizational and job-specific information. Thus, you and your team must create detailed process documentation.

    Process documentation refers to recording and detailing the step-by-step procedures, methods, and workflows involved in various organizational tasks, activities, or processes. It’s a comprehensive reference allowing individuals to follow consistent and standardized practices. Through implementing procedural documentation, you can avoid this risk altogether.

    Additionally, while quiet hiring can provide internal opportunities, there is a risk this process could overload a single employee instead of filling needed roles. Giving employees more work can often lead to burnout. Employees who experience burnout are more likely to have lower morale (36% of individuals), be less engaged (30%), make more mistakes (27%), and miscommunicate (25%). It’s a never-ending cycle that could hurt your business in the long run.

    Implementing Quiet Hiring

    Quiet hiring has many benefits, such as saving you time and resources spent elsewhere. But it’s not a strategy to implement without careful thought and planning. By implementing an internal mobility program, you can create structured processes that facilitate job shadowing and swapping. This will enable your team to gain insights into different positions before making a commitment.

    Whether or not you implement a mobility program, be sure you’re communicating with your team effectively. Be transparent about your quiet hiring initiatives and frame it as an opportunity your staff can take advantage of. Unilateral decisions, passing out new assignments, or moving team members across departments without clear communication are surefire ways to create resentment and employee dissatisfaction.

    Equally as important, when you ask employees to take on more or different responsibilities from their initial hire, you must reevaluate their compensation packages. This proactive approach will assist in retention efforts during moments of transition.

    In summary: 

    • Have a clear plan
    • Implement training programs
    • Create a detailed procedural document
    • Be transparent with your team
    • Understand your compensation commitments 

    Allow GMS To Help With Your Decision

    Should you choose to implement quiet hiring within your business, it’s essential you relay the message in a way that makes your employees feel valued. You don’t want them to think they’re interchangeable or not good enough for the job, but instead, you want them in a position where they can utilize their skills more effectively and have a more substantial impact.

    That’s where partnering with a professional employer organization (PEO), like GMS, can benefit you. We can help implement career development and leadership programs so you can train employees to take on more responsibilities in a scenario such as quiet hiring. Plus, through a job market analysis, we’ll help you ensure your compensating employees an appropriate amount.

    Joe Wenger, PHR, GMS’ Human Resources Manager, explained, “With Gen Z entering the workforce, it’s more important than ever for companies to develop programs that offer growth and promotion opportunities. Career advancement is one of the top priorities listed among the majority of this incoming generation. Internally at GMS, we’ve been ahead of the curve by implementing a leadership development program for top-performing frontline employees, aiming to prepare them as the future of our management team.”

    Contact us today to learn more.

  • Burnout. The feeling we’ve all experienced. As we wrap up 2022, we all get in the holiday spirit and get distracted from our jobs. Oftentimes, this time of year is a time when we get that burnt-out feeling of not wanting to give it our all. 48% of employees and 53% of managers report that they’re burned out at work. Job burnout is a type of work-related stress – a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity. The following are common characteristics of burnout:

    • Frequent illness
    • Disengagement and detachment
    • Feelings of frustration or helplessness
    • Loss of motivation

    What Causes Burnout?

    Even though burnout has become simply “part of the job” for many workers across the world, the organizational cost of burnout is substantial. Burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take sick days and 2.6 times as likely to be actively looking for a different job. Your job as a business owner is to ensure your employees don’t have these feelings before they choose to look elsewhere. The first step in doing so is understanding what can cause your employees to feel burned out. It may come as a surprise that the main factors driving employee burnout have less to do with expectations for hard work and performance and more to do with how someone is managed.

    The main factors that cause burnout include the following:

    • Unmanageable workload
    • Challenging to find a work/life balance
    • Feelings of having little or no control over your work
    • Pressure
    • Disconnect in values
    • Lack of support from managers, feedback, fairness and equity, participation in decision making

    How To Prevent Burnout

    Fortunately, you can prevent burnout from happening. You need to start by addressing the true causes of employee burnout. Perhaps you enforce weekly or bi-weekly meetings with your employees to check in on them. This will create a workplace environment that empowers employees to feel and perform their best, eliminating that feeling of burnout. Additional steps you can take as a leader for your employees is by considering the following:

    • Hold meetings in a different setting
    • Promote work/life balance
    • Monitor workloads and schedules
    • Encourage employees to use vacation time
    • Provide work-from-home options
    • Prioritize workplace wellness
    • Enforce management wellness
    • Create goals and career paths
    • Practice open communication
    • Lead by example
    • Welcome employee feedback

    The list is never-ending. You have to determine what works best for each employee, which you won’t know until you meet with them one-on-one. This is a time for you to get creative. Perhaps you create a contest with prizes to add a new dynamic to everyone’s daily routine, or maybe you do an exercise break once a day.

    Wondering Where To Start?

    Engaged employees drive concrete business results. When employees aren’t experiencing burnout, they’re more energized, enthusiastic, and focused. Step out of your normal work style and change it up a bit. Not sure where to start? GMS has you covered. Our performance review systems provide you with resources to provide your employees with consistent feedback, develop employees’ careers, goal setting, and so much more. In addition, our benefits department works with you to develop a benefits package your employees want and need. Whether you provide them with personal days or additional benefits they can use when they do reach that feeling of burnout, we help you every step of the way. We’re in this together. Contact us today to learn more.

  • It’s without question that individuals across the world are burned out and exhausted. Clearly, burnout in the workplace exists, and we are a long way from ideal working conditions brought on by the great resignation. Burnout can take different forms, affecting individuals physically, emotionally, and behaviorally.

    The following are common causes of burnout: 

    • Lack of adequate social support
    • Taking on more than one can handle at work, school, or interpersonally
    • Poor self-care
    • Lack of sleep

    Burnout is a feeling of being exhausted or the point when you feel trapped in a job without growth opportunities. It’s a recognized medical condition that affects 77% of employees. On top of that, burnt-out employees are over 50% more likely to seek a new job. As a business owner, how will you ensure your employees feel less burnout than normal?

    Sabbaticals Could Be The Solution

    While many businesses provide their employees with paid time off, sick days, and personal days, there are still businesses that don’t. As a business owner, consider starting there if you don’t already provide your employees with these benefits. However, if you already do, great! If you notice your employees are still experiencing burnout, there is another action you can take. Implementing a workable sabbatical program might be the next step for you. Sabbatical leave is an extended time away from work granted to an employee for varying purposes, including:

    • Personal reasons
    • Professional and academic growth
    • Learning and development of new skills
    • Rest and recuperation while maintaining their status as an existing employee

    However, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conducted a survey that showed only 11% of employers offered an unpaid sabbatical program, and just 5% offered sabbaticals with pay. Talk about a benefit that will differentiate you from your competitors. Employers seeking to recruit and retain top talent may overlook a benefit many workers are likely to appreciate – a sabbatical program.

    What Will You Do? 

    It’s no secret that many of your employees are feeling burnt out and potentially looking for better opportunities. However, GMS has just the solution for you. Did you know that flexibility can decrease burnout by 50%? That means that if you provide your employees with the benefits they need, whether that’s PTO, a hybrid work schedule, or perhaps a sabbatical, you could eliminate half of your employee’s burnout. GMS’ benefits outsourcing services allow your company to offer competitive, cost-effective benefits while you focus on what you do best – growing your business. Maybe right now isn’t a good time to provide your employees with a sabbatical program. If that’s the case, let GMS review your current benefits program and determine how we can improve them to decrease the burnout your employees are feeling. Contact us today to learn more.