Employers are increasingly offering new vacancies to current employees

In an attempt to solve the problem of labor shortages, Russian employers in the industrial, financial and construction sectors are increasingly resorting to “silent hiring” and filling new vacancies with their employees. In some cases, the share of positions filled through silent hiring reaches 50-60% – and is only expected to grow in 2024. The main disadvantage of “silent hiring” companies say is the unpreparedness of employees for new powers, the blurring of work responsibilities and the lack of an influx of new ideas.

Companies are increasingly resorting to “silent hiring” to compensate for the lack of applicants, according to a study by the Lerna.ru platform based on a survey of top managers and HR specialists from various enterprises. The situation is assessed in a similar way in the recruitment agencies with which Kommersant spoke. According to a survey by Lerna.ru, almost every second company (46%) uses “silent hiring” as part of its personnel management strategy, more often large ones, with a staff of 1 thousand or more people, from the banking, financial and construction industries. As Alexey Mironov, vice president for operational management of the ANCOR holding, notes, companies have indeed begun to resort to “silent hiring” more often, trying to solve “external” problems – and industrial companies are now practicing this approach more often than others. In addition to them, according to Nadezhda Fedotova, director of marketing and PR at the UNITY recruitment company, “silent hiring” is becoming increasingly popular in pharmaceutical production.

Representatives of the banking and financial sector, IT and telecommunications, industry, construction, services and trade speak more often than others (63%) about the difficulty of recruiting on the external labor market as a reason for “silent hiring”. Every third respondent (36%) states that the goal of increasing internal mobility of employees is to save time on selecting candidates; almost the same number (29%) admit to a lack of budget for searching for new employees. Rarely (4%) and mostly in large companies with a staff of 5 thousand or more people, “silent hiring” is conditioned by a confidentiality policy.

Another possible reason for the spread of “silent hiring,” as Nadezhda Fedotova notes, is associated with the growing number of counteroffers, often offering not only a higher salary, but also a new position. “Despite the competition for employees among companies, applicants are cautious and may consider an offer for several months, and then agree to a counter offer from their current employer,” she says. As Vladislav Bykhanov, partner at the recruiting agency Cornerstone, explains, large companies can transfer employees from one division to another and between subsidiaries. “Many people understand that it is better to create “closed” structures, where an employee can be endlessly “rearranged” from one workplace to another, than to let him go, losing the funds invested in training and maintaining loyalty, and start all over again with a new applicant,” – he says. It is easier to practice this for large companies with businesses in different industries and a developed system of HR departments capable of ensuring such transit effectively.

As follows from the survey data, every fourth company fills from 5% to 15% of vacancies through “silent hiring”, every tenth – much more. For example, at Tochka Bank, according to Olga Lipina, a corporate expert on employee rotation and retention, 10% of positions are closed this way, not counting employee transfers within departments. As Olga Izvekova, head of operational activities at Skillaz, told Kommersant, the company fills about 40% of vacancies through “silent hiring”. At Alias ​​Group, as the company’s HR director Zinaida Chumakova says, up to 60% of vacancies for senior and middle managers are filled this way. However, as the example of the Uralenergotel company shows, the figure may be higher – according to HR director Elena Kosolapova, 80% of the company’s foremen were previously installers in the company.

According to estimates from both companies and labor market experts, the share of “silent hiring” will only grow: for example, at AUCHAN Retail Russia, at the end of 2023 alone, the number of internal promotions increased by 30% year on year, says HR Director Daria Demina. “In 2017, the share of “silent” closures was only 7%, and today it is 88%. The success of this program is a constant focus,” confirms TechnoNIKOL HR Director Yulia Korochkina. Tochka expects that by the end of 2024, the number of vacancies filled through “silent hiring” will increase by 10%. Skillaz, according to Olga Izvekova, would also like to increase the share of such closures by 10%, to 50%. “Promoting employees from within will become increasingly popular as the search for new candidates becomes more difficult,” concludes Vladislav Bykhanov.

At the same time, as respondents to the Lerna.ru study note, “silent hiring” also has a number of disadvantages. Thus, top managers and HR specialists equally complain about the lack of knowledge among employees to perform new tasks (54%), increased workload on staff and their burnout (54%), blurring of roles in the team and the involvement of personnel in new positions in previous responsibilities (54%). 28% of respondents reported a lack of fresh ideas and approaches to solving work problems due to restrictions on hiring from the market, 12% reported employee dissatisfaction with new functions and layoffs, and 12% reported a deterioration in relationships in the team due to non-transparent selection of personnel for open positions. 8%. “Silent hiring cannot solve all personnel problems; any business needs new blood,” says Alexey Mironov.

Intensification of “silent hiring” within large companies can also lead to the fact that several managers want to see the same employee on their team. As the head of a team of IT specialists at one of the large Russian companies tells Kommersant, he was faced with the fact that an offer to his leading specialist was made by an HR specialist from a subsidiary of the same company, without coordinating the employee’s transfer with him. “Such stories can happen in large companies, when a department is faced with the task of achieving its business goals at any cost – and, of course, this practice is harmful to the company,” agrees Vladislav Bykhanov.

Anastasia Manuilova