Quiet Hiring: Admin Professional Trend

By Bonnie Low-Kramen for Admin Professional Today | November, 2023

The Great Resignation of 2020 led to massive and chaotic hiring in 2021. As burnout, stress, and mental health issues increased to red alert levels due to poor onboarding and inadequate training, Quiet Quitting took hold in 2022.

What’s happening now? Quiet Hiring.

Quiet Hiring is about filling open positions with the staff who are already on the payroll rather than hiring from outside the company. Job descriptions have already been in disorganized transition starting in 2021 which was called “The Year of the Job Description.”

What leaders and HR recruiters have discovered is that many of their current staff possess not-so-obvious talents and skills that can be leveraged for current projects. Despite having to pay current staff additional compensation for the additional work, quietly hiring them still costs far less than having to hire externally.

The Executive Assistants working in companies are prime targets for quiet hiring. In addition to already having excellent organizational, communication, and scheduling skills, many administrative professionals also can flex the following skills.

1. Tech Support Support IT with varied technology skills, including AI and the ability to teach these skills to others
2. All Aboard! Support HR with interviewing and onboarding abilities
3. Leading Teams More support to HR with ability to lead teams and supervise others utilizing high EQ
4. Project Management Support to leadership with project management and event planning abilities

One vivid example of quiet hiring is the C-suite Executive Assistant who saw that the onboarding system at her company was inefficient for both remote employees and in-person staff. She offered a proposal for a revised onboarding plan to the HR team, including the fact that she would be the project leader with a revised salary to go along with the plan. Her plan was happily accepted by the overloaded HR team.

Another example is the EA to the CEO who received support to get her MS Office certifications during the pandemic when her workload was suddenly reduced. After she achieved her goal, she offered to lead 30-minute virtual lunch and learns to teach others the time-saving tips that she learned. The sessions were such a success that she ended up getting paid extra money for each one because the ROI was instantly evident. These lunch and learns injected the virtual staff with new energy and enthusiasm for learning.

The advantages of quiet hiring are:

1. Improved staff retention from making jobs more interesting for current staff
2. Higher engagement, energy, and productivity on the team, resulting in a positive ROI
3. Retain the current staff’s institutional knowledge as culture carriers
4. Improved staff morale from the leaders’ actions around the “promoting from within” culture
5. Improved mental health and employee satisfaction as the new responsibilities combat loneliness and isolation from staff needing to interact with new people
6. Easier talent acquisition from current staff encouraging others to apply for projects and positions

The post-pandemic workplace has resulted in HR taking a close and fresh look at the current staff, specifically the Executive Assistants, in order to quietly hire them. The EAs are encouraged to come forward to discuss skills that they would like to utilize. It is a win/win situation for companies, especially when compensation for the assistants is adjusted to recognize their new responsibilities.

 

Here’s the link to the original article from the Administrative Professional Today newsletter.