The term "quiet quitting" went viral last year, describing people who stay in their jobs but mentally take a step back—for example, working the bare minimum and not making their job the center of their lives. Now in 2023, there is a new workplace trend on the horizon, called "quiet hiring".
Quiet hiring is a strategy used to fill the critical gaps in a company without hiring new employees. One company has a limited amount of talent and needs to make a call about where it's going to have the best impact. This year it may need to add five more data scientists to its team to meet the strategic goals. As a solution, it may move five employees from another department only for a short time, like data analysts in the human resources and marketing department, into the five open data scientist roles.
In this case, the boss is saying, "We're going to intentionally deprioritize (降低) support for HR and marketing for the next six months so that we can increase the productivity of our data science team, and we are saying this clearly. Everyone knows this." The important distinction with quiet hiring is that a company is openly communicating with employees about its priorities and moving employees to areas that serve those priorities, instead of just loading employees with more work or simply hiring more people.
While being assigned to a new role may seem scary, quiet hiring should be beneficial to employees. If you were asked to take on additional responsibilities, it would indicate your value. Meantime you might say, "If it's not possible to increase my payment, can we make it so that I can work from home five days a week，reducing my commute (通勤) costs? Or，could I work flexible hours, making it easier for me to live the rest of my life?" An individual conversation may be ineffective. If you're part of a department or team being asked to switch roles, employ that power and approach human resources as a group.
