You got the green light to hire back in Q1. Then as 2026 unfolded with all it’s unknowns, leadership came back with “let’s hold off” or “we need to wait and see.” And now you’re in a hiring freeze. Sound familiar?
You’re not the only one. Mike Dixon, President and COO of Hoops, has been hearing this across the board: “We have to go on a hiring freeze, a budget freeze,” is how he describes what companies are telling him right now on the Growth Shift Podcast with Jennifer Stile. Some figure they’ll just pick things back up in six months and call it good.
Here’s the problem with that thinking. A hiring freeze is a real, legitimate business decision. But too many leaders treat it as an all-or-nothing switch: either you’re actively hiring, or you’re doing nothing at all on the people side of the business. That’s the wrong way to think about it, and it’s an expensive assumption to make.
A frozen hiring budget doesn’t mean your people problems freeze too. Your best employees are still deciding whether to stay. Your managers should still be developing (or not). Your employer brand is still forming an impression, whether you’re posting jobs or not. Essentially, those six months you’re not actively recruiting are exactly the six months you have to get everything else ready.
Here are six ways to actually use that time to create real positive business ROI, most of which you can start doing yourself right away!
1. Get Your Critical Roles Mapped Before You Need Them
Nobody wants to be scrambling to figure out what they need the moment the budget opens back up. So don’t wait until then to figure it out.
Start by identifying which roles in your company are truly critical to driving results. It’s usually a smaller list than people expect, only about 10 to 15% of roles in most companies actually fall into that category. Our blog on identifying critical roles walks through how to actually narrow that list down instead of guessing. For those roles specifically, write down what a strong track record actually looks like, not just years of experience, but the kind of results and trajectory that predicts success. We go deeper on that in our blog on identifying A-roles and A-players.
While you’re at it, look internally. Who on your current team has been building the kind of experience that would make them a strong candidate for one of those critical roles down the line? You don’t have to act on it now, but having that list ready means you’re not starting from zero when hiring opens back up. And if a role has failed you before, it’s worth understanding why before you fill it again. Why nearly half of senior hires fail covers some good double-checks here.
If you’d rather have someone facilitate this process for you, this is exactly what our Talent Review Workshop is built for, a structured session that helps you identify critical roles, review current talent against them, and build succession and development plans, all in one to two days.
2. Put Fractional HR to Work on the Important Projects You Never Get To
The projects that keep getting pushed to next quarter are still sitting there. The difference is, now you actually have the bandwidth to get to them!
- Revamp your onboarding process. If new hires have been ramping up slowly or leaving in their first few months, this is a great time to step back and actually fix it, not just patch it. Our blog on onboarding ROI has tips on building a program that improves retention and productivity.
- Set up a real performance management structure. If employee reviews have been inconsistent, or you don’t have a clean process for documenting performance issues before they snowball, this is worth fixing now, before it costs you a good employee, or worse, turns into a compliance headache. Our blog on measuring and improving performance has free, practical tips here.
- Launch a structured engagement or pulse survey. Generic annual check-ins rarely surface much of value. Pulse surveys, done right, are built to catch real issues early, before they likewise escalate. Our blog on getting real ROI out of employee surveys covers how to set these up well.
- Clean up the policy and compliance backlog. Think outdated handbooks, inconsistent documentation, HR processes that only exist in someone’s head. None of this is exciting work, but it’s a lot cheaper to fix now than to deal with a compliance issue or lawsuit later! While you’re at it, if your company doesn’t carry Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI), it’s worth looking into. It’s relatively inexpensive coverage against claims like wrongful termination or discrimination, and it’s often overlooked by growing companies until they actually need it.
If you’ve got experienced people in-house who can tackle all of this, great. If not, the good news is none of it requires a full-time hire. We also offer fractional HR support and project work built for exactly these kinds of requests, at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire plus all the resources needed to DIY it.
3. Better Engage the People Who Are Staying (Out of Fear, Not Loyalty)
While low turnover right now might look like good news, it usually isn’t the whole story.
We actually found some surprising data around this on our blog why good employees quit: a low quit rate in this market often means people are staying because they’re scared to move, not because they’re thrilled where they are. That’s a very different situation, and it requires a very different response than assuming everything’s fine.
- Check retention team by team, not just company-wide. A healthy overall number can hide one manager losing everyone underneath them. Our blog on retaining people after you’ve hired them offers actionable, low-cost ways to close that gap once you spot it.
- Have real stay conversations, not just “performance reviews”. Ask something direct and telling, such as “what would make you want to stay here for the next two years?” Our guide on preventing turnover has more specific questions and a framework for making this a regular habit instead of a one-time check-in.
- Watch for quiet disengagement, not just resignations. If your people are starting to do the bare minimum (aka “quiet quitting), skipping optional meetings, and going quiet in conversations they used to jump into, those are all yellow flags worth catching now before they turn into turnover.
- Look for patterns in who’s already walked out the door. Even in a slow market, you’ve probably had a few exits recently. Please, don’t let those conversations go to waste. Our blog on turning exit interviews into something useful covers how to actually mine these losses for patterns instead of filing them away!
4. Invest in the Leaders You Already Have
If you’re not hiring new leaders right now, that’s actually a good argument for investing more in the ones you’ve got, not less!
- Do an honest read on who’s actually leading, not just managing. Who’s developing their people and grooming them to excel, not just reviewing task lists? Who’s struggling and would benefit from direct, hands-on coaching instead of a one-off training day? Our blog on manager development gives some great pointers.
- Run a personality and 360-assessment before your next promotion, not after. A personality assessment paired with 360-degree feedback gives you far more to work with than a gut call alone. Our blog on 360 reviews and leadership development covers why this step matters more than people think.
- Invest in coaching, not just a training day. Formal training is only about 10% of how leaders actually develop. The other 90% comes from real experience, coaching, and honest feedback, all things you can start building into your team’s rhythm without spending a dollar. Our blog on what leadership training actually pays off breaks down where that investment matters most.
- Watch for leadership drag. If your leadership team is feeling stretched thin or stuck, that’s worth tackling directly instead of hoping it resolves itself.
For a more guided approach, our Executive Coaching and Leadership Development programs are built specifically for this: developing the leaders you already have instead of hoping the next hire solves the problem.
5. Clean Up Your Employer Brand While the Pressure’s Off
Here’s an underrated advantage of a hiring freeze: you get to fix your employer brand without the pressure of an active search hanging over you!
- Read your reviews for underlying patterns. Pull up Glassdoor and Indeed and actually read through what’s there. Our blog on the hidden ROI in employer brand metrics covers how to spot when a recurring complaint is actually a systemic issue worth fixing, instead of writing it off as a few disgruntled employees.
- Audit your career page and job description templates. Do they actually reflect what it’s like to work there, or are they the same generic copy every competitor is using? Our blog on elevating your employer brand shares some tips to help here.
- Ask a few current employees what they’d actually tell a friend. Not a survey, but an honest conversation. You might be surprised by the gap between what you think your reputation is and what it actually is. Our blog on why employer brand matters gives more depth to this topic.
None of this costs anything but time, and it pays off directly the next time you do post a role, since candidates will look you up before they ever apply either way.
6. Benchmark Your Comp Now, So You’re Not Behind Later
Another reality check: frozen hiring doesn’t mean frozen pay ranges for your roles. If anything, waiting to check means you’re more likely to be behind when you do go back out to hire (and don’t forget about internal equity, keeping your current team feeling fairly paid too).
Pull current market data for your three to five most critical roles and compare it honestly against what you’re currently paying. Our blog on running a competitive salary analysis walks through how to do this step by step. If there’s a real gap, you don’t necessarily need to close it today, but knowing it exists now means you won’t be blindsided by it in the middle of a search later, when you’re already under time pressure.
This is also a good time to get honest about pay transparency. More candidates expect to see a real range upfront before they’ll even engage with a role, and our blog on balancing pay transparency and fairness is helpful if that’s still an open question for your team.
Our Market Insights Report does this for you with real-time compensation and labor market data, but even a rough manual check against job postings in your industry and region is a useful exercise on its own.
The Freeze Isn’t the Problem. Standing Still Is.
A hiring freeze limits one specific thing: bringing new people onto payroll. It doesn’t (and shouldn’t) limit your ability to prepare, develop, retain, or position your company well. The 6+ months you’re not actively recruiting can either be six months of standing still, or six months of getting ready to come back stronger than the companies that just waited it out.
Most of what’s above, you can start today, on your own, and some of it even for free. But if you’d rather have an experienced partner help you work through it so it actually produces real company ROI, that’s what we live for!
👉 Schedule a free discovery call with Hoops
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