Quiet quitting and quiet hiring: what they mean and how to deal with them
In recent years, the world of work has changed faster than our ability to interpret it.
In particular, the labor ecosystem has been faced with two increasingly obvious phenomena: quiet quitting and quiet hiring, two alarm bells that HR practitioners can no longer afford to ignore.
While quiet quitting, at first, may have seemed like just a "social trend," the numbers tell a different story: it is a structural, entrenched phenomenon with real impacts on people's well-being, productivity and even the ability of companies to attract and retain talent.
It is not surprising, then, that it has become a central theme in the economic and HR debate in recent years.
According to data from theMilan Polytechnic's HR Innovation Practice Observatory, in fact:
- 2.3 million workers (about 12 percent) are quiet quitter: they do the bare minimum, are emotionally disconnected, and do not feel valued;
- Only 7 percent of Italian workers describe themselves as truly "happy."
- Just 11 percent are doing well simultaneously on psychological, relational and physical well-being;
- 42% have been absent at least once in the past year due to psychological or relational distress;
- despite 59 percent of companies anticipating growth in their workforce, 94 percent are struggling to find staff, especially digital and technical profiles.
The numbers (not only in Italy) tell of a labor market undergoing a profound transformation, where on the one hand burnout, misalignment and meaninglessness are growing, and on the other hand the pressures are increasing on companies, which in order to survive must redistribute skills and responsibilities internally, often giving rise, voluntarily or otherwise, to forms of quiet hiring.
Quiet quitting: what it is, meaning of the term
The most widely recognized definition of quiet quitting comes from Gallup, one of the world's most authoritative sources on engagement and work research: quiet quitting describes workers who "do only what is required and are psychologically detached from their work."
We therefore refer to those professionals who do not leave the company, but engage the bare minimum: no proactivity, no extra availability, minimizing emotional and collaborative effort.
As we have seen, the phenomenon is far from marginal, in Italy but also in the rest of the world.
According to Gallup, at least 50 percent of U.S. workers today fall into the category of quiet quitters.
What are the causes of quiet quitting?
Quiet quitting does not arise from laziness or lack of commitment, but from a breakdown in the psychological pact between worker and organization.
There are some recurrent and structural causes:
- lack of clarity about roles, expectations and priorities: according to Gallup, fewer than 4 in 10 young workers (especially among Gen Z and Millennials) say they clearly know what is expected of them. Without clear direction, the engagement of professionals will inevitably decline;
- Poor managerial support: Quiet quitting is often a direct consequence of management quality. Gallup itself says the phenomenon is "a symptom of poor management": only 1 in 3 managers say they are engaged in their role, with an immediate impact on their teams;
- absence of concrete opportunities for growth: if people in the company do not see a future, they are unlikely to be able to invest in their present;
- decline in psychological and relational well-being: according to asurvey by UnoBravo, 44 percent of respondents said they felt stressed at work, while nearly one in three (29 percent) said they had experienced real burnout;
- lack of recognition and valorization: 12 percent of Italian quiet quitters say they "limit themselves to the minimum" because they do not feel valued in either talents or contributions.
Quiet hiring: what is it and what does it really mean?
If quiet quitting describes the silent retraction of workers, quiet hiring is the response, more or less voluntary, of many organizations to a new talent shortage scenario.
According to Gartner, which popularized the term, quiet hiring is the practice by which a company fills critical skills or roles without hiring new people, but by redistributing activities, roles and responsibilities within the organization.
Technically, with quiet hiring you aim to get new skills, but without new hires.
Quiet hiring can materialize in different ways:
- Temporarily assigning new responsibilities to those already on the team;
- Moving people from one department to another to fill skill gaps;
- increase loads and activities without a corresponding increase in resources;
- Use external consultants or freelancers only for timely activities.
Why is it related to quiet quitting?
Quiet quitting and quiet hiring are two sides of the same coin: both arise from the growing mismatch between what workers can (or want to) give and what companies demand.
On the one hand, we have an impactful percentage of Italian workers who declare themselves quiet quitters: we are talking about 2.3 million workers, people who do only the bare minimum because they do not feel valued or supported (Polimi HR Observatory data).
On the other:
- 94 percent of Italian companies report difficulty in finding staff (digital skills but also technical and operational skills);
- 59% expect growth in headcount, but fail to cover it.
The result is that many companies, not finding the necessary skills, push in-house resources, often without adequate support or recognition. Hence a vicious cycle is triggered:
Poorly managed quiet hiring (new tasks without development or recognition) breeds quiet quitting: people become exhausted, lose motivation and "switch off."
Widespread quiet quitting (low engagement, low proactivity) drives companies to quiet hiring: skills are lacking and the burden falls on a few.
HR strategies to prevent quiet quitting and quiet hiring
While it is true that quiet quitting and quiet hiring are not isolated phenomena, ill symptomatic of a radically changing labor ecosystem, it is equally true that preventing these phenomena means intervening on the structural levers of well-being, work organization and leadership.
Here are some strategies you can put into practice to curb quiet quitting in work relationships.
1. Restoring organizational clarity
One of the most frequently cited causes of quiet quitting is the lack of clarity about what each professional is expected to do and what his or her responsibilities are.
This ambiguity is a source of misalignment, frustration and operational passivity.
WHAT AN HR CAN DO:
- Define precise job responsibilities for each role (avoiding "hidden" tasks that accumulate over time);
- Mapping weekly and monthly priorities with clear tools;
- Introduce short alignment meetings (daily/weekly) that reduce dispersion;
- Put performance expectations in writing, avoiding implicit assumptions.
2. Redistribute the workload in a sustainable way.
Quiet hiring often stems from a real problem: skills that are lacking.
According to a McKinsey report, 44% of companies have already experienced major skills gaps in the past 5 years, and that number is set to grow further.
The problem is that many organizations react by "shifting" activities and responsibilities without a strategy.
WHAT AN HR CAN DO:
- Evaluate real loads with metrics such as workload capacity and not just qualitative perceptions;
- Introduce shared prioritization systems;
- ensure reskilling and upskilling pathways before moving people;
- Designate "bridging" roles only temporarily and with clear compensation.
3. Elevating leadership
All research converges on one point: manager quality is the most predictive variable of engagement.
Therefore, preventing quiet quitting means working on leadership in a structured way.
WHAT AN HR CAN DO:
- Train managers on 4 critical skills: feedback, delegation, recognition, conflict management;
- Create a culture of conversations (not just operational meetings);
- Introduce situational leadership models that help support people differentially;
- measure leadership with metrics such as team NPS, retention rate, and progression rate.
4. Transparent and realistic growth paths (versus stagnation and turnover).
Of all the factors that fuel quiet quitting and turnover, lack of professional development is one of the most underestimated, but also one of the most documented.
No engagement strategy really works if employees perceive stagnation. This not only affects companies that do not offer structured training paths, but also those that do not clearly communicate future prospects, leaving people in a limbo of uncertainty that inevitably fuels disaffection, disengagement and, in the worst cases, quiet quitting.
The same phenomenon can be observed on the other side of the coin. According to the LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report., among the top reasons people stay with a company is the opportunity to develop new skills and build a realistic growth path.
When this does not happen, companies find themselves forced to fill missing roles or rare skills through forms of quiet hiring.
The cycle then is clear: where there is no development strategy, stagnation increases → turnover increases → the need to move people to new responsibilities increases → the risk of quiet hiring increases.
WHAT AN HR CAN DO:
- build visual and understandable career paths, even for non-managerial roles;
- Make the advancement criteria transparent;
- Fostering internal mobility based on data, not personal relationships.
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5. Mapping competencies objectively
One of the factors that most fuels quiet hiring and quiet quitting is the lack of real visibility into in-house skills.
To date, most of the global workforce will need to be retrained in the coming years due to AI & digitization.
WHAT AN HR CAN DO:
- Use structured assessments to map technical, soft skills and potential;
- Create internal skill inventories that can be updated;
- Design teams not on the basis of "available" people, but on expertise data;
- Identify hidden talents before resorting to the external market.
How Skillvue helps HR and companies prevent quiet quitting and quiet hiring
In an environment where quiet quitting and quiet hiring are often the direct result of lack of clarity about competencies, lack of growth, and subjective evaluations, HR needs tools to make decisions based on data, not impressions.
Skillvue combines advanced psychometric science with proprietary AI technology to enable companies to map and assess employee skills, potential, and readiness in a rapid, objective, and scalable manner.
In a matter of minutes, Skill Assessments enable behavioral evidence to be gathered through situational questions based on the Behavioural Event Interview (BEI) model, technical tests and realistic scenarios. The result is a comprehensive picture on:
- organizational and management skills (planning, delegation, operational leadership, problem solving);
- technical and digital skills, with 150+ ready-to-use skill tests;
- potential for professional growth and maturity;
- Ability to take responsibility, lead teams or deal with complex workloads.
This type of assessment allows HR to intercept signs of quiet quitting (misalignment, demotivation, role mismatch) earlier and avoid quiet hiring, because it allows HR to really understand who to invest in, who can grow, who is at risk of overloading, and what skills are really lacking within the organization.
When we think about a labor market in which the vast majority of Italian companies struggle to find staff and nearly half of the working population values a change of role, the ability to know, develop and retain one's people makes the difference between a reactive organization and one that can build futures.
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