Quiet Hiring Is Changing How Companies Build Workforce Capacity

“Quiet hiring” may have started as a way to describe companies filling skill gaps without making traditional external hires. But the underlying practice is proving more durable than the label.

In today’s cautious hiring environment, organizations can expand their capabilities through internal mobility, selective external hiring, contractors, technology, AI-enabled productivity and employees taking on responsibilities that once belonged to separate roles. Recent BambooHR data illustrates the shift: Internal mobility accounted for 62% of hires in 2025, up from 51% in 2021.

Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank bring perspectives spanning talent strategy, recruiting, ethics, organizational development, employee experience and workforce planning. Their message is consistent: Quiet hiring itself is not necessarily a problem. The risk comes when organizations use it to obscure how work is changing or expect employees to absorb additional responsibilities indefinitely without clarity, development or recognition.

“The interesting shift is from ‘Who can we hire?’ to ‘What capability do we already have, and where can we move it?’”

– Doug Dennerline, HR technology executive at Betterworks

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The Label May Change, But the Strategy Remains

Doug Dennerline, an HR technology executive at Betterworks, a performance management and talent intelligence company, sees quiet hiring as part of a larger shift toward making better use of existing workforce capabilities.

“The label may fade, but the behavior won’t,” Dennerline says. As companies face cost pressure, he sees organizations becoming more deliberate about “redeploying people, redesigning roles and building skills internally before adding headcount.”

That changes the question leaders ask. Rather than immediately looking outside the organization, they can first examine whether the capability already exists on the inside of it.

“The interesting shift is from ‘Who can we hire?’ to ‘What capability do we already have, and where can we move it?’” Dennerline says.

That approach can make sense when the organization has employees with adjacent skills, development potential, or unused capacity. 

The opportunity, however, is not simply to avoid adding people. It is to understand the skills the organization already has and deploy them intentionally.

“If most senior roles get filled through relationships before they’re ever advertised, then your personal brand and your network aren’t optional. ”

– Wendi Weiner, Founder of The Writing Guru®

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The Hidden Job Market Is Becoming More Important

Wendi Weiner, Founder of The Writing Guru®, a career branding and executive resume writing firm, sees another dimension of the shift: Some hiring is happening, but it is becoming less visible.

“Quiet hiring isn’t dead. It just folded into the hidden job market,” Weiner says. In her view, companies have moved toward “selective and intentional hiring,” partly because AI-generated resumes have increased application volume without necessarily increasing the number of qualified candidates.

That has made trusted relationships more valuable. Weiner says hiring managers and executives increasingly rely on “pre-vetted referrals” from employees, board members and their own networks.

She also points to “the rise of fractional talent and internal promotions,” particularly among executives whose responsibilities expand without the role ever appearing on a job board. That means a company can increase leadership capacity without creating a conventional external search.

For employees, the implication is significant. “If most senior roles get filled through relationships before they’re ever advertised,” Weiner says, “then your personal brand and your network aren’t optional.”

The result is a labor market in which the absence of a job posting doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of hiring. Companies may be sourcing differently, filling positions through relationships or increasing capacity through people already inside the organization.

When Capacity Changes, Leaders Still Owe Employees Clarity

Chuck Gallagher, President of Ethics Resource Group, brings an ethical dimension to the conversation. His work focuses on business ethics and responsible AI governance, including questions of accountability, transparency and human responsibility.

“Quiet hiring isn’t dead, and it didn’t get a rebrand,” Gallagher says. “It got a promotion.”

His point is that what once looked like an HR tactic can now become a financial and operating decision. Organizations can keep formal headcount relatively stable while using other mechanisms to increase capacity.

Gallagher points to temporary workers, technology investment and attrition as three ways that capacity can change without a corresponding increase in traditional payroll headcount. His broader concern is not simply how the capacity is created, but whether employees understand what is happening.

“‘We’re not hiring’ is true and ‘We’re not cutting jobs’ is true,” he says. “Together they hand someone a false picture of their own future without a single inaccurate word.”

That distinction makes transparency a leadership responsibility. Gallagher recommends that leaders be able to answer three questions: Where did the capacity come from? Who absorbed it? What did we tell them?

“The first two are operations,” he says. “Third is character.”

The need to have clarity becomes especially important as organizations make selective hiring decisions. Reuters reported in March that Microsoft had paused hiring in major cloud and North American sales divisions while continuing to hire in areas including its Copilot AI development team, illustrating how organizations can simultaneously constrain hiring in some areas and expand it in others.

“Quiet hiring can quickly become quiet overloading.”

– Gigi Garcia, Founder and CEO of HR Couch

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Treat Expanded Work As Workforce Design

Gigi Garcia, Founder and CEO of HR Couch, a people-first consulting and coaching firm focused on human resources, leadership development and organizational transformation, says the most important question is not what the practice is called.

“Quiet hiring isn’t dead. It just became harder to recognize,” Garcia says.

She sees companies expanding capacity through “stretch assignments, internal mobility, contractors, fractional talent, AI-enabled productivity and employees quietly absorbing responsibilities that once belonged to separate roles.”

That variety matters because not every increase in workload represents the same thing. Technology may eliminate unnecessary work. A redesigned process may genuinely make a role more efficient. An employee may take on a temporary stretch assignment that builds new skills.

But Garcia says leaders need to distinguish those situations from permanent increases in responsibility.

“When responsibilities expand without corresponding clarity, compensation, development or recognition, quiet hiring can quickly become quiet overloading,” she says.

That distinction is especially important when an employee’s additional responsibilities become permanent. “Stretching into new responsibilities can be development,” Garcia says. “But when additional work becomes permanent while the role, compensation and resources never change, we should stop calling it a stretch assignment.”

The issue is not whether organizations should ask employees to grow; it is whether they design that growth intentionally.

Build Precision Capacity Without Creating Confusion

Britton Bloch, VP, Global Talent Acquisition Strategy and Head of Recruiting at Navy Federal Credit Union, describes the trend as “precision capacity building.”

Rather than treating hiring as an all-or-nothing decision, she says companies are limiting broad-based hiring while making targeted talent investments where urgent capability gaps exist.

“Many companies are limiting broad-based hiring while making targeted talent injections where technology, AI, cybersecurity, data or other rapidly changing capabilities create urgent gaps,” Bloch says.

Those investments can take several forms, including “selective external hires, internal mobility, accelerated upskilling, contractors, managed services or technology that allows existing teams to accomplish more.”

That helps explain why flat headcount does not necessarily mean flat capability. An organization can add a critical skill while reducing investment elsewhere, use attrition to offset new hiring or move employees into higher-demand areas.

The challenge is communicating those decisions. “The concern is not targeted hiring itself, but opacity,” Bloch says. When employees hear that a company is not hiring but see exceptions being made, trust can erode.

Her solution is straightforward: Explain which capabilities require investment, why internal development cannot meet the timing or scale of the need and how existing employees can prepare for emerging opportunities.

That approach turns quiet hiring from something employees have to decode into a workforce strategy they can understand.

Ask Where the Work Actually Went

Nicole Cable, Chief People and Experience Officer at C3 Health, a healthcare organization focused on integrated care solutions, approaches quiet hiring from an employee experience perspective.

“Quiet hiring may have changed names, but I am less interested in what we call it than in understanding where the work went,” Cable says.

That question can expose whether an organization has actually improved its operating model or simply redistributed unfinished work.

“A hiring freeze does not mean the organization stopped growing,” she says. At the same time, “increased capacity does not automatically mean employees are overworked.” Technology may eliminate unnecessary tasks, processes may become more efficient and roles may be redesigned.

But those changes need to be understood.

“When someone leaves and is not replaced, what happens to the work?” Cable asks. “When the business grows without additional headcount, where did that capacity come from?”

The answer should also reveal what happened to the employee who absorbed the responsibility. Cable asks if something was removed or if the organization “added more to their plates.”

That distinction matters because workload alone is not the only issue. Gallup’s 2026 research identifies unmanageable workload, unclear communication and lack of manager support across the workplace conditions associated with burnout. Employees who strongly agree that they know what is expected of them are 47% less likely to experience frequent burnout.

Cable’s standard is therefore simple: “Efficiency should mean accomplishing the work with less friction, not expecting fewer people to carry more indefinitely.”

What Leaders Should Do When Headcount Stays Flat

• Look at capabilities before opening a requisition. Map existing skills, adjacent capabilities and internal mobility options before assuming an external hire is the only answer.
• Explain why some roles are being filled while others remain frozen. Targeted hiring is easier to understand when employees know which capabilities are strategically important and why.
• Track where the work goes after attrition. A vacancy does not eliminate the responsibilities attached to the role; leaders should identify who absorbs them and what work gets removed.
• Make stretch assignments genuinely developmental. Additional responsibilities should come with clarity around skills, support, career growth, recognition and, when appropriate, compensation.
• Use technology to redesign work, not simply intensify it. AI and other productivity tools should reduce unnecessary friction rather than permanently increasing employee workloads.
• Give employees a path into emerging opportunities. Internal mobility and upskilling are strongest when employees understand which capabilities the organization will need next.

Quiet Hiring’s Future Is Less About the Label

Quiet hiring is unlikely to disappear simply because the phrase loses popularity. The underlying practices—redeployment, internal mobility, selective external hiring, contractors, technology-enabled productivity and expanded responsibilities—are becoming part of how organizations manage capability in a more cautious hiring environment.

The better question for HR leaders is not whether their organization is quietly hiring. It is whether they can clearly explain how capacity is created, how work is redistributed and what employees can expect as those decisions unfold.

As companies continue balancing cost discipline with new skill demands, the strongest workforce strategies will make those tradeoffs visible. Quiet hiring can be a smart workforce design when it develops people and closes capability gaps. It becomes a problem when “doing more with less” simply means asking employees to carry more without a clear reason, path or reward.