Reason #13 to Hire O&E: You’re Quiet Hiring
Remember when everyone was talking about quiet quitting — the trend where employees do the barest minimum of work they need to do to keep their jobs, and nothing more? This chronic disengagement is now seeing its counterpart: quiet hiring. In fact, Gartner lists quiet hiring among the 9 Future Work Trends of 2023. Enterprises and SMBs are using this strategy to combat difficulties in finding and keeping employees with the skills and talent their business requires to succeed. Furthermore, budgets are tight, and many organizations need specific tasks done with limited funds available to hire additional employees.
What Quiet Hiring Is
Quiet hiring is when businesses use existing employees to take on new roles and fill gaps where needed. It is a restructuring of sorts; capitalizing on employee talents — or potential talents — and applying them where they will be most beneficial. Quiet hiring looks different in every scenario. It could involve extensive training or unearthing a background you didn’t know your employee already had. It could fill a temporary need or be a long-term solution.
In many ways, quiet hiring is the opposite of quiet quitting. Organizations practicing quiet hiring are looking for the employee who is consistently engaged with the business and brand, seeing it as a cohesive whole and willing to invest in their place in it.
What Quiet Hiring is Not
Quiet hiring does not mean piling additional jobs onto an employee’s plate, causing them to feel overwhelmed, or giving them more work than they can handle. It’s not meant to be more work as much as different work. When done correctly, quiet hiring should not exploit or take advantage of employees, but instead, be a way for employees to feel valued and engaged while simultaneously fulfilling a need for the company.
Quiet Hiring in Action
Quiet hiring is nothing new to us; in fact, it’s a big part of our business. Oxford & Em functions as ancillary support for our clients, filling creative and strategical gaps and offering best-in-class writing for a fraction of the cost of a full-timer. Sometimes this means acting as the standalone execution arm of a business’s marketing team, sometimes it’s working as writer and marketer, and sometimes we help develop digital writing talent inside small businesses. We often work with staff shifting into marketing from another role, helping them figure out exactly how everything works as seamlessly as possible.
One of our favorite examples of this comes from one of our favorite clients: Custom Craft.
Custom Craft’s VP Mike Foering has always sought to hire the right people, not just the right skill set. They’d grown dramatically in their 40 years of business but still retained a family feel — everyone on the team generally cares about, collaborates with, and just plain likes everyone else. With a very low turnover rate and very high standards, they’re incredibly deliberate about who they bring onto the team.
In 2019, Custom Craft completed a comprehensive design center in a high-traffic area. This state-of-the-art space would be used to catch the interest of new clients, showcase the latest material samples, boast private consulting rooms with 3D modeling technology, and more. They needed someone inside the new design center to answer phone calls and greet new clients as they came in to find inspiration and ideas for their home remodels — a friendly face to make a great first impression. Megan Satalino was the perfect candidate. With a background in office management and customer service, she had what it took to make new clients feel comfortable and provide an excellent first step in their remodeling journey.
While the design center was initially conceived as a first stop for potential clients, it gradually transformed into a place existing clients went to choose their fixtures and features for their projects. Custom Craft’s team of designers usually headed this part of the remodeling experience. Megan was also managing a lot of operations behind the scenes, but it was clear she could do more.
Megan was clearly skilled at customer interactions, highly organized, and detail-oriented. What if, they wondered, she took over marketing?
They’d always worked with marketing agencies and still would — but perhaps they could try having Megan coordinate vendors instead of retaining a full-service marketing agency. Although Megan had never worked in marketing, she loved learning and thrived on a good challenge.
Benefits to Businesses
Shifting Megan’s role to include marketing coordination helped Custom Craft fulfill a need while maximizing a great employee’s potential. Businesses with quiet hiring success stories like this one enjoy:
Saving time and money that would be spent hiring new full-time employees
Increasing employee retention and engagement
Being in control of the content and quality of training for new skills
Having a response to changing needs without resorting to layoffs or unnecessary spending
Fortunately for Megan (and us), Custom Craft had already established a working relationship with Oxford & Em. Pleased with our style, efficiency, understanding of their brand, and flexible, variable expense, they knew they could count on us to help Megan with her new responsibilities. We’ve been assisting ever since with blog posts, newsletters, website content, and more.
Benefits to Employees
Quiet hiring can be a win-win scenario, with a number of benefits for the employee as well as the business. Megan is a great example of an employee who craves an occasional change of pace, new challenges, and growth opportunities. In her case, quiet hiring was and continues to be a rewarding experience. Other benefits employees might see include:
Possible incentives such as raises, bonuses, increased PTO, or more flexibility
Development of new skills
Becoming more marketable for future employers
Becoming an irreplaceable team member
For Megan, the quiet hiring process generally worked out very well. She likes to be doing lots of different things — she even has a side business as a tailor and crafter — but sometimes time management and switching back and forth require superhuman skill. Still, the Custom Craft team is truly a family — if it was ever too much, Megan knows she could speak up.
Quiet Hiring Tips
Could quiet hiring be the solution your business needs? Here are some ideas to keep it beneficial for both your organization and your employees:
Be on the lookout for secret skills and interests. A person with a passion for perusing Pinterest could be a social media savant.
Consider the employee’s bandwidth, and never ask them to do more than what can be reasonably accomplished.
Think of the employee first. The new task you’re asking them to do should be to their benefit more than your need.
Schedule regular check-ins with the employee — how’s it going, really? It’s good to be challenged, but make sure they’re not overwhelmed.
Have a succession plan — if the person is really good, they should be promoted into doing more of the work they love. How will you delegate the rest?
Have a support team — like Oxford & Em.
Our team of former teachers is happy to show your “new” employee the digital marketing ropes with minimal chafing. Got a wordsmith on your crew? We excel at scaffolding budding writers into experts at crafting compelling copy. With our guidance, your existing employee could soon tackle all your content and copy needs — from updating your blog to drafting your newsletter to coming up with a catchy slogan in your next ad. Best of all, you won’t need to hire a new employee to up your marketing game.
If you’re looking to stretch your employee's skills and cultivate a copywriting superstar, we can help. Contact us to learn more.
