Business

Addressing Immediate Hiring Needs Through Quiet Hiring

Published

3 years ago

February 28, 2023

Hiring usually falls into three categories: backfilling roles, creating new ones, or addressing immediate needs. Quiet hiring is about that third category, even if it doesn’t technically involve any new hiring.

The idea of this strategy is to prioritize the most crucial functions at a given time. With Gartner predicting “quiet hiring” as the top workforce trend for 2023, it’s important to know exactly what it is and how to use it appropriately within the organization.

Quiet hiring is essentially when an organization gains new skills without having to hire a full-time employee. Sometimes, it means hiring short-term contractors or providing current employees with more responsibilities. This can mean moving employees around between departments, training them and hiring up, or simply taking on a heavier workload.

Jason LaMonica, COO of staffing company Spec on the Job, weighs in on what quiet hiring would look like for blue-collar industries. “It’s about changing the narrative,” he says. “Instead of upskilling or promoting internal managers with no experience in the field, hire a contractor outside of your organization and train them before making a full-time committment. They know the industry and they know the field. With a little bit of training, they’ll get the job done right.”

According to LaMonica, hiring contractors provides a number of benefits for companies seeking to address immediate hiring needs while saving onboarding costs. These include streamlining hiring by saving time and resources on recruiting, onboarding faster and from a wider talent pool, and allowing the staffing company to handle compliance needs.

“Hiring contractors allows companies to fill talent gaps faster,” LaMonica says, “especially if they are staffing to address peaks or valleys in their business. Moreover, it provides companies with time to ensure that the new contractors are a good fit for their team as well as easier avenues to terminate their contract if they aren’t.”

The reality is, since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a labor shortage that continues to increase each year. Some argue that this is due to employers refusing to pay the appropriate wage to their employees. Others counter that, since there are more job openings than people, jobseekers are taking advantage to get a higher paying role. Regardless of why there’s a labor shortage, there still exists a need to quickly adapt to the rapidly evolving workforce.

By hiring from outside the organization and providing the necessary training or schooling, companies will be able to increase retention, engagement, and productivity. “When companies work with trade schools or community colleges to provide additional training to its contractors, it provides those outsourced employees with something to look forward to,” LaMonica insists. “By offering clear paths for development that could eventually provide them with full-time employment, there’s a lower chance that they’ll seek another job that doesn’t offer advancement opportunities.”

“Whether or not we go into recession, everyone’s a little nervous,” concedes LaMonica. “Every employer still has financial goals to meet, and they can’t meet those goals if immediate hiring needs aren’t met.”

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost per hire is $4,700 and it takes about 36-42 days to fill the position. In a potential recession, this is too much of an expense for any company, quiet hiring and upskilling current employees help reduce that cost.

According to LinkedIn’s survey, “companies that excel at internal mobility retain employees for an average of 5.4 years, nearly twice as long as companies that struggle with it.” For companies looking to improve retention rates from the contractors they oursource, this is a significant number to consider when thinking about their hiring needs.

“I’m passionate about building companies, growing teams, and having my work change the world,” LaMonica states. “As part of a staffing company dedicated to blue-collar industries, it’s important to know when recruitment costs outweigh hiring within the company.” Understanding this difference will help companies become recession-proof by increasing employee retention and lowering overhead costs.

Business

How Technology Drives Value Creation in Private Equity

Published

2 weeks ago

April 29, 2026

Matthew Wiles

How technology drives value creation in private equity is now one of the most actively debated topics among institutional investors and fund managers. A decade ago, technology was largely a cost center in PE-backed companies. Today it sits at the center of margin improvement, revenue growth, and exit multiple expansion. Firms that figured this out early are generating better returns with less reliance on financial engineering.

The shift happened for a practical reason. As interest rates rose and deal multiples compressed, financial leverage stopped doing the heavy lifting. Operational improvement became the primary value creation lever. Technology accelerated what was possible within the ownership period.

How Technology Drives Value Creation in Private Equity Operations

Operational improvement through technology produces the most measurable results. PE firms apply technology tools to reduce costs, increase throughput, and improve decision-making speed inside their companies.

Digital Process Automation in PE-Backed Companies

Manual processes in back-office and production functions carry real costs. They consume labor, generate errors, and slow down the information flow that management teams depend on. Automation tools eliminate these costs without requiring headcount reductions that disrupt company culture.

The most impactful automation deployments in PE-backed operations include:

Accounts payable and receivable automation that compresses billing cycles and reduces days sales outstanding
Production scheduling software that reduces downtime and improves throughput in manufacturing environments
Inventory management systems that cut carrying costs by aligning purchasing with real-time demand signals
Quality control automation that reduces defect rates and warranty claims in product-based businesses

ZCG Consulting (“ZCGC”) works with companies across industrials, manufacturing, packaging, and consumer products to identify and implement automation programs tied to specific financial outcomes. The approach connects technology investment to measurable margin improvement rather than treating automation as a general upgrade.

Data Infrastructure as a Value Creation Tool

Many PE-backed companies arrive under new ownership with fragmented data systems. Different departments use different tools. Reporting requires manual consolidation. Leadership makes decisions with incomplete information.

Fixing that infrastructure creates immediate value. Integrated data systems give management teams real-time visibility into revenue, cost, and operational performance. That visibility accelerates decisions and surfaces problems before they become material.

James Zenni, founder and CEO of ZCG with over 30 years of capital markets experience, has consistently emphasized that information quality drives investment performance. That view shapes how ZCG approaches technology investment across the companies in its portfolio.

Technology Drives Value Creation in Private Equity Through Revenue Growth

Cost reduction gets most of the attention in PE operational improvement, but technology also drives revenue growth. The mechanisms are different, and they compound differently over a hold period.

E-Commerce and Digital Customer Acquisition

Companies that sell primarily through traditional channels often leave significant revenue on the table. Adding e-commerce capabilities or investing in digital customer acquisition expands the addressable market without proportional cost increases.

PE firms that invest in digital revenue channels generate higher growth rates during the hold period. That growth rate difference translates directly into exit multiple expansion.

Revenue growth technology applications in PE-backed companies include:

E-commerce platform buildouts that open direct-to-consumer channels alongside existing wholesale relationships
Customer relationship management systems that improve retention and increase repeat purchase rates
Digital marketing infrastructure that lowers customer acquisition costs through better targeting and attribution
Pricing optimization tools that identify margin improvement opportunities without volume loss

Technology-Enabled Customer Experience Improvements

Customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition. Technology investments in customer experience, service speed, and product quality consistency reduce churn. Lower churn produces more predictable revenue. More predictable revenue supports higher exit valuations.

ZCG deploys Haptiq Technologies and Solutions, its 300-plus-person technology division, to support digital transformation across its companies. The platform was founded 20 years ago and manages approximately $8 billion in AUM. It brings implementation resources that most individual companies cannot afford to build internally. That capability gives ZCG’s companies faster access to technology improvements at lower execution risk.

Building Technology Capability Within PE-Backed Companies

Technology investment during the hold period creates value in two ways. It improves financial performance during ownership. It also makes the business more attractive to the next buyer.

Strategic buyers and later-stage PE funds pay premium multiples for companies with modern technology infrastructure. A business with integrated systems, clean data, and digital revenue channels commands a better price. A comparable business running on legacy platforms does not.

The ZCG Team structures technology investment as part of the initial value creation plan for each company. Priorities get set at entry based on the gap between current capability and acquirer expectations.

This pre-sale positioning approach changes how technology investment gets funded and sequenced during the hold period. Projects that improve financial performance and exit readiness simultaneously get prioritized. Projects with long payback periods that do not improve the sale narrative get deferred.

How technology drives value creation in private equity is ultimately about execution discipline. The tools matter less than the clarity of the financial objective each technology investment must achieve.