What does ‘job hugging’ mean for the workplace?

As the news has filled with stories about mass layoffs, political strife and poor economic indicators, workers are holding onto their jobs like they’re life preservers in a stormy, uncertain sea — creating the phenomenon recently dubbed “job hugging.”

Most employees plan to stay in their jobs for the next six months, according to a July report from Eagle Hill Consulting. The report also found that workers’ confidence in the job market has plummeted to its lowest level since the company’s Employee Retention Index began in 2023. 

While this might seem like a good thing — fewer people leaving, less turnover, less money spent on hiring and search — it can also be a sign that employees don’t want to be in their current roles and are only staying there because they feel they don’t have other options.

For HR professionals, it’s “really important…to not coast through it,” Wende Smith, BambooHR’s head of people operations, said of the current job hugging trend.

Job hugging can affect productivity

If employees are hanging onto their jobs out of a sense of fear about job security, it could mean that they’re just going through the motions instead of feeling engaged and motivated in their work.

Now more than ever, it’s critical for HR managers to “understand what’s motivating and driving employees, to ensure that you’re driving engagement based on outcomes and not based on optics of viability,” Smith said. That means looking beyond surface-level metrics, like turnover rates, and opting to “really understand why, and compare and contrast your engagement to performance-driving objectives.” Employees who are hugging but unhappy would typically show drops in performance. 

HR professionals can also look at “how many people are having development conversations with their managers,” said Jamie Aitken, vice president of HR Transformation at Betterworks, and which employees are continuing to be focused on their professional growth.

But people staying with a company doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re job hugging, Aitken said. HR managers can look at internal mobility to see if employees are “moving into different roles within the organization,” she said. That internal mobility rate can be “an indication that folks are just sticking with what they know, or if they’re actually pursuing different options.” 

Job hugging can affect search

Workers sticking to their jobs can also make it difficult to hire key talent. People may not want to leave what they know is a secure situation, even if it means missing out on a potentially career-changing opportunity.

“People are nervous. For you as you’re recruiting key talent, you really need to ensure that they understand your company,” Smith said.

That can mean highlighting the stability of their organizations, like talking about long-term growth plans, company vision, and “doubl[ing] down on the value proposition for that employee,” said Smith. If the organization hasn’t had any layoffs, that should be highlighted too. 

Creating “micromobility” opportunities within the organization

If companies have a job-hugging problem — or want to prevent one — they can work to create “micromobility” within the organization, said Aitken.

“It’s not so you have to change everything in your entire role,” she said. Instead, it’s the idea that someone can take “mini risks with short-term projects” across business functionalities. The concept can help turn a fear about making a change at work into a curiosity, which can help current workers grow and try new things, all while staying with a company they know.

This can also play into recruitment, Aitken added, because micromobility creates “an environment and a culture that focuses on development,” she said. Hiring managers can tout that this doesn’t just mean development of the organization, but of employees as well.