The time period tree hugging has been round for many years. It originated from acts of braveness—individuals actually embracing bushes to guard them from destruction. Over time, the phrase advanced to symbolise a deep respect for nature and a want to protect it. It was about safety with goal. The time period job hugging, nevertheless, is one thing else fully. It’s a comparatively new addition to the HR vocabulary, popularized earlier this 12 months by administration consultancy agency Korn Ferry to explain staff “holding on to their jobs for pricey life.” Not like tree hugging, job hugging has no noble trigger. It’s a symptom of a stagnant company ecosystem.
After all, the habits itself is just not new. Labor markets have all the time seen a proportion of staff who keep put—some for good causes (stability, household, loyalty), others out of worry, consolation or lack of alternative. Some are in peril of changing into just like the eponymous clerk in Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: ever current however largely unproductive. However the label job hugging is new—a catchy, barely cynical shorthand for one thing organizations have lengthy struggled with: learn how to distinguish between loyalty and lethargy.
The phantasm of motion
Even in the course of the so-called Nice Resignation in the course of the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, voluntary attrition charges barely exceeded 3 p.c. At present, they’ve fallen again under 2 p.c in most Western economies. Regardless of headlines claiming huge workforce churn, most individuals keep the place they’re, and all the time have. That’s why job hugging is much less a revelation than a mirrored image of how some HR consultancies work: the fixed have to repackage acquainted truths with new labels.
The pattern additionally speaks to broader financial nervousness. Within the U.S., the place headlines about delicate landings coexist with layoffs rippling from tech to media and hiring freezes, many staff are choosing security over exploration. Financial uncertainty has made job hugging a rational alternative, although one that always traits short-term safety for long-term stagnation.
But behind this buzzword hides a extra severe problem: the sluggish erosion of productiveness, agility and engagement throughout many Western economies. When productiveness stalls, it’s not as a result of individuals aren’t working. It’s as a result of many organizations have constructed cultures that protect work fairly than enhance it. They reward tenure, course of and compliance over creativity, curiosity and braveness. The consequence? Workforces crammed with individuals optimizing for private security fairly than enterprise efficiency. They’ve change into skilled job huggers.
What job hugging actually reveals
Let’s be clear, most job huggers should not unhealthy individuals. They’re usually exhausted, over-managed and under-inspired. They’ve change into conditioned into pondering that doing simply sufficient to remain out of hassle is safer than taking dangers. Many have quietly concluded that their corporations don’t genuinely recognise efficiency—that effort and reward are weakly linked. So why stretch?
At its core, job hugging is a failure of management and system design, not of particular person morality. Most organizations are merely not excellent at measuring productiveness or contribution. Their efficiency administration programs are ritualistic: annual evaluations, obscure scores, infinite calibration conferences. What they lack is readability and communication about what success seems like and the way it’s measured.
A tradition of job hugging grows wherever management avoids exhausting conversations and errors politeness for kindness. False kindness—tolerating mediocrity within the title of concord—slowly eats away at belief, ambition and excellence. It’s time to speak about this overtly. And it’s time to behave.
Shifting past job hugging
Right here’s a realistic framework—not theoretical HR jargon—to assist corporations transition from cultivating a job-hugging workforce to constructing a wholesome efficiency tradition. A tradition that’s supportive however not delicate; bold however not poisonous.
Set up a transparent sense of course
Folks can solely carry out once they know what they’re performing for. In 2023, Tufan Erginbilgic, CEO of Rolls-Royce, known as the corporate a “burning platform,” warning that there was in actual fact no time left to provoke change. The phrase electrified his workforce and traders alike. It was brutally sincere, and vital. By stating what wasn’t working, Erginbilgic laid down a problem and a possibility to “all assume in another way, act in another way, make a distinction.”
Each firm wants this sort of readability: The place are we heading? Why does it matter? What is going to occur if we don’t change? And not using a compelling course, even the most effective expertise drifts into routine. With that, bizarre groups can change into extraordinary.
Create a framework of rolling milestones and metrics
Massive annual targets don’t work anymore. Trendy organizations want rolling, clear milestones—particular, bold but sensible targets reviewed quarterly and even month-to-month. This cadence builds rhythm, accountability and power. Extra importantly, it shifts the main target from busyness to outcomes. Most job huggers are very busy—answering emails, attending conferences, sustaining the phantasm of contribution. Milestones pressure readability: are we shifting the needle or simply shifting paper?
Assess supply for groups and people
Many corporations declare they already do that. Most don’t. Efficiency evaluation in most corporations is subjective, biased towards likability or hierarchy. True evaluation is troublesome as a result of it requires confronting discomfort and naming what isn’t working and why. Excessive-performing organizations are courageous sufficient to measure supply in opposition to agreed milestones, not impressions or politics. It’s the distinction between main by information and managing by gossip.
Deal with under-performance and misplaced consolation
There isn’t a room for sustained under-delivery or poisonous attitudes in a for-profit enterprise. That doesn’t imply cruelty or heartlessness; it means honesty with compassion. False kindness helps nobody: not the corporate, not the workforce and never the person caught in a job that not suits. Many job huggers are themselves sad however select the security of an everyday revenue over the chance of change. Good leaders create a tradition the place these conversations can occur with dignity and respect. Generally, serving to somebody transfer on is probably the most humane act of management.
Be beneficiant with exits
It could sound counterintuitive, however beneficiant exit preparations usually pay for themselves rapidly. Most giant organizations are over-staffed by 10 p.c to twenty p.c. A well-designed voluntary exit or redundancy program can have a really brief return on funding—not simply financially however culturally. When individuals go away with goodwill, those that keep are reminded that the system is honest, humane and centered on efficiency fairly than punishment
The deeper query: What are we optimizing for?
If job hugging is the symptom, what’s the illness? It’s the trendy company office’s obsession with stability over vitality. In lots of Western economies, we now have constructed work cultures that remember management, predictability and routine. These qualities carry security, however additionally they suffocate innovation. Actual efficiency comes from power—from individuals who really feel they’re a part of one thing that issues. When leaders reignite goal, align targets with which means and reward braveness as a lot as compliance, the job huggers both rework or self-select out. Each outcomes are wholesome.
Job hugging often is the newest HR phrase, however it captures a real malaise: too many individuals, in too many organizations, are holding on as an alternative of shifting ahead. The problem for leaders is to not criticize them, however to create environments the place motion feels protected, goal feels actual and efficiency feels acknowledged. When corporations are clear about course, sincere about contribution and beneficiant about exits, they cease cultivating job huggers and begin nurturing performers. And simply possibly—just like the tree huggers earlier than them—they rediscover that actual safety comes not from clinging, however from caring sufficient to behave.
Dr. Helmut Schuster and Dr. David Oxley are main profession consultants and authors of Synthetic Loss of life of a Profession: Tips on how to keep related and thrive within the age of AI (Sensible Inspiration Publishing)
