You have a good employee on your team, and they’re doing great. Then, out of the blue, they refresh their LinkedIn profile and take a couple of vague days off.
Your first instinct is to panic. Are you losing a key team member, being blindsided, and left to find someone to fill their role?
In many cases, the answer is no. They’re not betraying you – they’re just creating a safety net because they’re afraid. This is known as career cushioning. What is it, and why are so many people doing it now? Let’s dig in.
What signs should you look for, and how should you react as a manager?
Career cushioning became a popular term during the late-2022 wave of tech layoffs. They might still be performing at a high level in their day-to-day. But you notice little signs like new certifications or sudden coffee chats with networking contacts.
What Is Career Cushioning, Really?
Career cushioning is the act of quietly building a safety net while you’re still employed. It can include:
- Updating your résumé and LinkedIn profile. But not telling anyone about it
- Reaching out for coffee chats and networking with old colleagues and recruiters
- Browsing job postings to get an idea of the market and salary ranges
- Learning new skills or getting certifications so you have leverage if you need it
The key here is that you aren’t necessarily planning to leave your current job any time soon.
This term comes from the same root as the term “cushioning” in dating, which is the act of keeping backup options on hand in case your current relationship goes south.
Several major companies made large cuts during this wave:
- Meta laid off around 11,000 employees in November of 2022, a full 13% of their workforce
- Google and Alphabet announced 12,000 cuts in January of 2023, about 6% of their workforce
- Amazon cut around 18,000 roles in January of 2023
- Microsoft laid off 10,000 in January of 2023
- Goldman Sachs cut around 3,200 roles in January of 2023
It’s easy to see how, if you had friends and colleagues who were suddenly locked out of their accounts and received an email telling them they were no longer employed, you would start to take action to prepare yourself for the same thing. It’s not disloyal, it’s just rational.
Career cushioning is not the same as actively looking for a new job. When you’re actively looking for a job, you’re applying and interviewing, and you have the intention to leave. When you’re career cushioning, you’re passively prepared to leave. But you’re still doing your job.
Two Trends That Tell the Same Story
Quiet quitting is the act of an employee doing just what is required of them by their job description. The term went viral on TikTok in the summer of 2022, and while it’s hard to pin down the origin of a viral trend, many people credit a TikTok video by Zaid Khan (@zaidleppelin) in July of 2022.
The idea behind it is that, rather than quitting a job, an employee decides that they are not going to do anything beyond what they are paid to do. In other words, they don’t go above and beyond.
Gallup, in September of 2022, reported that at least half of all workers in the United States were “quiet quitters” – or, as they put it, “not engaged” employees. In their 2023 State of the Global Workplace report, they put the number at 59% globally.
Quiet Hiring on the Employer Side
Quiet hiring, meanwhile, is a term for the act of filling gaps in skills without hiring a new full-time employee to fill them. Gartner listed it as one of the top workplace trends of 2023. While it’s difficult to pin down the origin of the term, the framing of the trend seems to come from Emily Rose McRae of Gartner.
The idea behind quiet hiring is three-fold.
The first is shifting employees from roles that are no longer a priority to new roles that are. The second is upskilling current employees rather than hiring new people to fill roles. The third is hiring short-term contractors, gig workers, or temporary employees to fill gaps as necessary.
What ties all three of these together is the act of hedging, of making a minimum of investment or commitment up front. Workers hedge by lining up their next options. Employers hedge by making use of flexible hiring, backups, and not committing to any one employee long-term.
This raises a difficult question. If your company is hedging by quietly planning for backups and replacements, why wouldn’t your employees do the same? After all, planning for backups is a rational thing to do, even if you’re one of the best employees the company has ever hired.
Why Do Good Employees Have a Plan B?
Before we dig into the signs of career cushioning, let’s talk about why it happens.
Gallup’s 2022 data found that only 32% of U.S. employees are engaged in their work. Another 18% are actively disengaged. That leaves the majority somewhere in between – they’re at work. But they aren’t emotionally invested.
When employee engagement is this low, it’s not the exception – it’s the rule. It’s not surprising that employees are looking to keep their options open.
So, why are good employees looking to build a backup plan?
It’s a rational response to uncertainty. It’s not mutually exclusive with doing a good job today.
The Main Reasons Employees Cushion
Fear of layoffs. A lot of high-profile layoffs at seemingly stable companies have made waves. Meta cut 11,000 in November of 2022, and announced another 10,000 in 2023. Amazon cut a staggering 27,000 roles in 2022-2023.
What did employees learn from this? That even if you’re doing a good job, you aren’t necessarily safe.
Stalled compensation. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in the United States in June of 2022, according to CPI data. If your raises aren’t keeping up with inflation, you’re effectively taking a pay cut. The Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker found that, meanwhile, people who switched jobs were seeing much higher pay growth than people who stayed put. What does this tell employees? That the fastest way to get a raise is to seek an outside offer.
This is backed up by Pew’s 2022 survey of people who quit in 2021, which found that low pay was a reason 63% of them left, and lack of advancement opportunities was also a reason 63% left. Another 57% felt disrespected at work.
Uncertain growth. If an employee doesn’t see a clear path forward in their career, they’re going to start looking outside for opportunities.
When Trust Starts to Break Down
A lack of trust. Whether it’s a surprise reorganization or a lack of transparency (or a vague answer) when asking about the health of the company, employees who don’t trust their employers will start to look for something better.
A lack of trust can also be local. Gallup found that managers are responsible for 70% of the variance in team engagement, and a trust gap is often a local issue based on the relationship between an employee and their manager.
Think back to the last time you were concerned about your own job. Did you update your résumé? Did you reach out to contacts? Did you browse for job postings?
The most talented and best-performing employees aren’t immune to this, either. In fact, they’re in the most precarious positions, because they have the most options. They’re the most visible to recruiters, and the most frequently approached.
Small Signs a Team Member Might Be Looking
Has your employee recently updated their LinkedIn? New headline, new photo, new deep description of recent accomplishments? This is all to catch the attention of recruiters. They may not want to have the “Open to Work” flag on, at least not for the whole world to see. But they’ll make themselves available to recruiters.
Are they getting certifications or taking courses that aren’t necessarily relevant to their current role? They may be looking to build skills that can be taken to another company and used elsewhere.
Are they taking more PTO, on short notice, with vague explanations? It might just be to attend an interview.
Are they pulling back on commitment to long-term, multi-quarter projects? They might not want to have to take ownership of something they might not see to the end.
Are they talking more about industry trends, competitors, and people they know outside of your company? They may be expanding their network and getting a feel for what the market is and what their pay might be.
None of these alone is a sign that someone is looking. But over time, if you see these patterns, it can be a good reason to have a chat. Don’t treat it like a checklist to catch people, though.
These Signals Are Not Always What They Seem
First, remember that not all of these signs are as bad as they sound.
An employee refreshing their LinkedIn profile can be a good thing for your employer branding. If they post about the successes of their team, you reach more potential clients and potential future employees, boosting your sales, recruiting, and industry visibility.
An employee requesting additional PTO might have family to care for, such as children or elderly parents. They may have an illness, treatment, or recovery they don’t want to discuss with you but still need time off to handle.
An employee feeling burnt out is experiencing what the WHO called an “occupational phenomenon” in their ICD-11 in 2019.
An employee taking more courses and getting more certifications might be aiming for a promotion within your company. Building skills and showing initiative can be a sign they’re investing in their current role.
Why do we immediately assume the worst? Sometimes, the leap from these signs to an employee leaving is a sign of your own anxiety about employee retention. There’s nothing worse than treating a loyal employee like they’re about to leave, removing them from projects and opportunities because you’ve already written them off, and having it become a self-fulfilling prophecy as they leave because you pushed them out.
Remember that curiosity can come before conclusions. Have an open, non-accusatory chat with the employee to see what their goals are, how they’re feeling with their workload, and if they need any support.
Why Cracking Down on Staff Will Backfire
Once you think you’ve identified employees who are engaging in career cushioning, you might be tempted to monitor them, question them, remove them from important projects, or threaten them.
For example, you might monitor their LinkedIn activity, watching for signs that they’re updating their profiles, making new connections, or setting their profile to “Open to Work.” The problem is, a lot of these actions can be innocent – people can be making connections, being reached out to by recruiters, and learning about their industries for reasons that have nothing to do with career cushioning.
You might also question their time off, asking why they’re taking time off for an appointment or requesting PTO. This is a sign that you don’t trust them to use their earned time off appropriately.
But removing them from important projects also removes their opportunities to grow. That’s one of the most common reasons why people start to career cushion in the first place.
You might also threaten them with veiled warnings about how they need to be loyal to the company, or how layoffs could be on the way, or something of the sort. All of these actions are likely to have the opposite of the desired effect.
If an employee is career cushioning, it’s often because they have a gap in trust between them and the company. They don’t feel secure in their position, they don’t feel like they have a place in the future of the company, or they don’t feel like they’re appreciated. If they’re quietly planning to leave, and you start to monitor them, you prove their fears and expand that gap in trust.
This is likely to drive away the employees who are most valuable to your company, the ones who are performing at a high level and have the most options available to them. A 2022 Work Trend Index from Microsoft describes this as “productivity paranoia”, a gap that develops between leaders and employees.
Put yourself in the shoes of your employees. If you were working for a company, and you felt like your boss was watching your LinkedIn profile, asking you why you’re taking PTO, and sidelining you from important projects, how would you feel?
Legal Risks of Monitoring Employees
If you’re in the United States, you also need to be aware of the National Labor Relations Act, specifically Section 7, which states that employees have the right to engage in concerted activity. This includes discussions about pay and working conditions with other employees. For most employees in the private sector, outside of management and other supervisory roles, if you retaliate against or monitor employees for these discussions, you can be charged with an unfair labor practice.
Employers must be mindful of their use of electronic surveillance to monitor employees, as well as the information they seek to obtain from employees. Surveillance that is focused on protected activity, such as your employees discussing their pay or working conditions, can potentially lead to unfair labor practice charges under the NLRA.
Additionally, some states have laws that prevent employers from accessing personal social media accounts. For example, California Labor Code 980.
Have the Hard Talks That Build Real Trust
Talk to your employees, honestly, about their job security. Even if you don’t have good news to give, giving them the best information you have, telling them what you know and what you don’t, and when you’ll know more is a good way to build trust.
Similarly, make sure your employees know what their growth paths look like, what skills they should build, what their next roles can be, and what it takes to reach them. Offer competitive pay, benchmarked against the market. Have regular check-ins to discuss what they want next.
You can also conduct stay interviews, which are a concept popularized by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans in their book Love’Em or Lose’Em. The idea is to ask your employees why they stay with you. “What is it that keeps you here? What would it take to get you to leave?”
You can’t promise that you’ll never lay people off. But you can promise that you’ll never spring it on them. Trust is harder to build when you’ve promised it’s going to be fine and it’s not.
Give Your Team a Reason to Stay
The key here is to recognize that the person doing the cushioning probably isn’t a bad employee. More often, they’re a top performer who is still performing at the top of their game every day. They’re just looking for a little insurance, because they don’t trust you as much as you trust them.
While it’s easy to panic at the idea that an employee is looking for a way out, and that panic is natural, it’s not a failure on your part. It’s also worth recognizing that some amount of career cushioning is natural and even healthy, especially in uncertain economic climates. Learning new skills, earning certifications, and building networks can all benefit your employee in their current position as well.
The goal here isn’t to strip away safety nets. But to give them more reason to stay. What should you do?
Start with a frank one-on-one conversation this week. Discuss job security, growth opportunities, pay, and workload. Be more of a listener than a talker, though, and don’t interrogate them about their LinkedIn updates. You don’t want to be a surveillance system or confrontational – that just widens the trust gap.
At the same time, make sure you’re being as honest as you can with the employee about the health of the company. Then, make sure to live up to what you promise. Small commitments kept can help build trust back up over time.
If you want to help your managers foster a culture of trust, consider our Organizational Trust resource – the Organizational Trust Customizable Courseware. It helps managers evaluate the level of trust within their teams, recognize behaviors that erode that trust, fight distrust before it grows too deep, and restore trust to the organization. It’s a powerful tool to help with retention, recruitment, and performance, in a culture of respect and integrity.
What would your team say if you asked them, honestly, how secure they feel in their positions?
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