How ‘Job Hugging’ Shapes Workforce Strategy

Employee retention rates are a key metric for measuring employee engagement within an organization. But thanks to a rising trend, they might conceal a concerning truth. Where job hopping was the dominant trend for millennials, Gen Z workers are holding onto their jobs with both hands, even if they are unfulfilled or burning out. Economic uncertainty, disruptive new technologies, and a difficult job market make switching jobs feel too risky.

If low employee turnover is no longer a green flag, what measures can HR leaders take to foster teams that see their organization as an opportunity, not simply a life raft? If the trend continues, organizations need to be prepared to rethink their approach to growth.

Why is job hugging on the rise in 2025?

The trend is growing steadily across multiple anglophone markets. In the US, the Market Opportunity Indicator, which measures how confident employees feel about their chances of finding a new job, has fallen to its lowest level since the metric was introduced. At the same time, voluntary turnover has dropped to an average of 13%, down from 17.3% in 2023. And in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, 55% of employees say they’re prioritizing job security over career ambition.

‘Rest and invest’ is a well-known risk of equity-based compensation plans, where employees stay because they want to bank equity even if they are disengaged. However, job hugging goes beyond that to include employees with no equity incentives.

Job hugging vs conscious unbossing

Another trend that similarly taps into workers’ preference for stability is conscious unbossing, which involves staying in the same role and avoiding leadership opportunities. While similar to job hugging, conscious unbossing only signals an unwillingness to climb the career ladder, not inherent dissatisfaction with their existing role.

To understand the nuance and how to tackle resistance to leadership, read my previous article: What Conscious Unbossing Means for the Future of Work

What are the risks for organizations?

If we’re only concerned with retention and churn, job hugging poses no problems. However, comfort without challenge eventually kills culture, and job hugging actually carries numerous risks:

• Engagement and innovation decline: When people stay out of fear, they may mentally “check out” and stop pushing boundaries

• Stalled growth and skills atrophy: Fewer lateral moves or external exposures limit capability development and knowledge sharing

• Latent attrition: When macro conditions improve, mass exits may happen if people have stayed too long in frustration

• Talent pipeline disruption: Internal mobility, promotion, and succession planning may stall as open roles dwindle

How should HR diagnose job hugging?

Understanding the scale of the trend is one thing, but understanding how it impacts our individual organizations is another. Employee retention rate alone isn’t enough, and no one metric will indicate job hugging.

Pulse surveys are a good indicator of how people are feeling, and high retention paired with low eNPS scores indicates a problem. But this system isn’t foolproof. Various factors impact how honest people’s responses will be, such as perceived anonymity. Job huggers are unlikely to admit that they’re unhappy and so will temper their responses.

To reliably diagnose job hugging, HR data can reveal teams or cohorts with high tenure, low promotion rates, and declining engagement scores over several quarters. This formula, tracked over time, helps to identify job hugging clusters, allowing for targeted solutions and re-engagement strategies.

Traditional “flight risk” models may miss this pattern because they read stability as success. Instead, organizations can use engagement heatmaps, sentiment analysis, and internal mobility data to identify where energy is fading.

What can HR leaders do?

Once HR identifies job hugging clusters within our organizations, what can be done about them? While the trend is largely due to external factors, that doesn’t make us powerless. Empathizing with our teams and directly addressing the challenges they face is far better for building culture. But it has to go beyond lip service to be effective. Here are some practical tactics:

• Transparent career architectures: When paths and metrics are visible, employees get a better idea of how they can grow within an organization and perceive internal mobility as less risky.
• Safe option pathways: If a traditional promotion or lateral move feels too drastic, temporary changes allow employees to test out new roles before committing to something permanent. Role rotations, stretch assignments, shadowing, and secondments allow safe exploration while encouraging growth.
• Redesigned employee engagement plans: Employee engagement plans have to meet people where they are. New engagement plans that account for people’s preference for security and comfort over
• Robust feedback systems: Part of the danger of job hugging is that people stay despite unhappiness. Seeking out the root cause of discontent is only achievable when there is a possibility of change. Feedback systems should generate actionable insights, and any changes made should be widely communicated to build trust.
• Improved engagement tracking: As we’ve seen, retention alone isn’t enough to measure engagement and identify job hugging. Use Deel’s data and workforce analytics to help clients surface stasis zones, spot misalignment, and support better talent mobility.

Turning data into action with Deel

Job hugging doesn’t mean employees have stopped caring. It often means they’ve stopped seeing a path forward. Deel helps HR and People teams understand the full story behind workforce stability, uncovering disengagement early and empowering leaders to take action before culture stagnates. From mobility insights to global talent analytics, Deel enables you to turn uncertainty into opportunity.

Book your 30-minute Deel demo today.