Why Internal Mobility is More Than an HR Term
In 2021, talent shortages were at a 15-year high and three years later, 2024 continues the trend. Finding top talent that is proficient in the skills of tomorrow is difficult for most companies.
According to the 2024 Talent Shortage Survey by the Manpower Group, more than 7 in 10 (75%) companies report talent shortages and difficulty hiring. The four highest global talent shortages are in Health Care & Life Sciences, Consumer Goods & Services, Information Technology and Transport, Logistics & Automotive industry verticals.
Some companies recognize this modern recruiting challenge and are shifting their approach to how they hire. Instead of searching for new employees outside the company, savvy managers are looking internally to fill the increasing talent shortfall. Top companies are turning to internal mobility as a strategic solution to fill skill gaps, retain their talent, and improve not just morale but revenue and profit.
What is Internal Mobility?
Internal mobility is the movement of employees across different roles within an organization. This movement can be vertical or lateral through project-based assignments, job rotations, cross-training, secondments, talent marketplaces, internal gig economies, internal promotions, lateral moves, and stretch assignments. By leveraging internal talent, companies improve employee engagement, foster a culture of continuous learning and development, and reduce hiring and onboarding costs. While this isn’t a new concept, companies are far from leveraging internal mobility to its fullest potential.
Are Internal Mobility and Talent Mobility the Same?
Internal mobility and talent mobility are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct nuances. While both terms refer to the movement of employees within or between organizations, their focus and scope differ.
Talent Mobility
Focus: Encompasses the movement of employees both within and between organizations.
Scope: Includes internal transfers, promotions, relocations, as well as external placements (e.g., secondments, assignments) and acquisitions.
Goal: To maximize talent utilization, attract and retain top talent, and achieve strategic business objectives.
Internal Mobility
Focus: Primarily concerned with the movement of employees within an organization.
Scope: Typically involves promotions, lateral transfers, or relocations within the company.
Goal: To optimize employee potential, enhance job satisfaction, and foster a sense of career growth within the organization.
Is Internal Mobility a Common Practice?
Internal mobility is up 30% since the onset of COVID-19, according to LinkedIn. However, it is still more common for employees to frequently change companies to further their careers rather than try to climb the ladder in a single organization.
According to a poll by Monster in January of 2024, 95% of employees said that they were considering leaving their jobs.
40% say there's no room to grow in their current job, up 6% from 2023 (34%).
In 2020, LinkedIn found employees stay 41% longer at organizations with high internal hiring than those without.
What Are The Advantages of Internal Mobility?
Internal mobility provides several advantages for companies seeking to fill roles, particularly in these challenging times. Here are a few key advantages.
Improved Employee Engagement
Opportunities for career growth and development boost employee morale, satisfaction, and retention.
Enhanced Skill Development
Internal mobility can help identify skill gaps and provide employees with opportunities to develop new skills and advance their careers.
Fill Roles Faster in a Tight Labor Market
The labor market, especially for highly skilled roles, is small and competitive which means roles are not being filled in a timely manner or at all. Top talent is already employed or potential candidates do not have the skills to qualify for the available position. When you have vacant positions, your team’s performance suffers. Other employees will have to pick up the slack, even if it’s not their area of expertise. Productivity, fulfillment, and your bottom line will drop.
Internal mobility allows you to skip the line and fill critical positions quickly. Recruiting from within your organization increases the chances of a quality hire because you ideally already have a sense of the candidates’ skill sets, proficiencies, and experiences.
Reduce Training and Onboarding Needs
Internal mobility also allows you to minimize the time to onboard a new hire. While an internal recruit may need to learn the process and systems of a new department or team, they are already familiar with the organizational systems.
As a manager, you know the onboarding process is critical to the long-term success of an employee. Studies have shown that when a company has great onboarding 69% of employees are likely to stay for at least 3 years.
Instead of rushing to onboard a critical role and risk losing a new employee, managers who recruit internally can spend more time customizing the onboarding process to the employees’ needs. Without the time-consuming burden of general and cultural onboarding, a manager can focus on job-specific skills, procedures, and systems the employee needs to succeed on the job.
Think about this as skipping the Tutorial stage and jumping straight into Level 1.
Minimize The Risk of a Bad Hire
The average cost of a bad hire is up to 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Every time you bring in a new employee you take on the risk of a bad hire.
It goes without saying that you likely are already familiar with existing employees. You will know if they work well within your company culture, if they understand your systems, and if they have the skills and experience required to do their job well.
While it’s not realistic to completely avoid hiring and therefore bad recruits altogether, reducing the unknown reduces the inherent risk of a bad egg and the painful associated costs.
Upskill and Strengthen Your Current Workforce
Internal mobility can help you identify strengths and gaps in your workforce’s capabilities. Skills and talent intelligence expose opportunities to leverage and upskill your teams. Ensuring that your people have access to resources, programs, and data that will help them update their skill sets is critical to maintaining performance, as industries and technology changes rapidly.
Positions that were once entirely manual are now becoming automated, requiring people to almost entirely relearn how to work. Internal mobility brings these skill gaps to the forefront, enabling managers to construct data-driven, strategic solutions for a skills based organization to build better teams and maintain a competitive edge.
Retain Your Top Talent
This carries right over to our final point. Retaining top talent has never been more important. Yet, employees are jumping ship because they are seeking career growth. By embracing internal mobility, business leaders can prioritize upskilling, provide opportunities for career growth, and create true job fulfillment. By creating a culture that helps employees achieve their goals, managers are developing a stronger, more loyal workforce that will drive success.
Benefits of Internal Mobility for Employees
Internal mobility offers numerous advantages for employees:
Increase job satisfaction and engagement. Employees who feel that they have opportunities to grow and develop are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs and engaged in their work.
Improve skills and knowledge. Internal mobility allows employees to learn new skills and knowledge, which can make them more valuable to the organization.
Lead to higher earnings. Employees who are promoted or transferred to higher-paying positions can earn more money.
Provide opportunities for career advancement. Internal mobility can help employees to advance their careers by moving into more challenging and rewarding roles.
Benefits of Internal Mobility for Employers
For organizations, internal mobility presents several advantages:
Reduce turnover. Organizations that offer opportunities for internal mobility are more likely to retain their employees.
Improve employee morale. Employees who feel that they are valued and appreciated are more likely to have high morale.
Increase productivity. Employees who are skilled and knowledgeable are more likely to be productive.
Help to fill critical roles. Internal mobility can help organizations to fill critical
Key Factors for Successful Internal Mobility Programs
To ensure the success of internal mobility initiatives, consider the following factors:
Transparency: Clearly communicate processes and discuss opportunities openly to promote trust and openness
Recognition and Support: Recognize achievements and actively support employees in their desire for internal change
Manager Training: Provide specialized training for managers to understand how they can promote and support internal mobility
Incentive Systems: Offer incentives for managers who encourage internal mobility, such as recognizing their efforts in performance reviews
How Can You Take Advantage of Internal Mobility?
While recruiting is traditionally thought of as an HR function, business managers should certainly take advantage of internal mobility. This starts with leveraging the right tools. A key principle of successful internal mobility is to look outside of your day-to-day team. Looking for an IT Project Manager? Turn to your Product Managers or Business Analysts. Seeking a new Sales Director? Try your Customer Experience team.
Skill gaps identified by internal mobility is valued by employees and improves training, development and retention programs. If several candidates have 75% of the skills necessary to do the job and only need training in the other 25%, then you have justification for spending on the training program.
Even if you turn to external recruiting to fill the immediate position, you’ve indirectly created the chance to strengthen your team or department in a key skillset and provide employees opportunities for true career growth.
How Can I Develop An Internal Mobility Approach That Gets Results?
Here are some ways to implement internal mobility in an organization:
Create a culture of mobility: Make internal mobility a part of the company culture and promote it throughout the organization.
Develop clear paths: Create clear development paths to help employees see a future with the company.
Offer learning opportunities: Provide learning opportunities that make sense for employees.
Choose the right technology: Choose technology that can connect employees and skills to inform and enable opportunities. Gain immediate insights through a live skills inventory of your company’s entire workforce.
Educate management: Educate management on the benefits of internal mobility for the organization holistically.
Imagine, when you’re ready to recruit, you can just sit down with your job requirements and immediately identify the right candidates by their skill sets and proficiencies using a workforce intelligence map of your organization. No guessing. No bias.
Such a comprehensive view of your organization can also help you discover candidates you would never have sought out. Relying on internal networking, you may have never learned that Jerry on the data engineering team has previous experience in product management. Or that Lisa in web development, has a degree in network security. A live skills inventory reveals all these hidden possibilities instantly.
Developing a strong, internal mobility program doesn’t mean that you should quit hiring externally. It just means that you now have more than one option when it comes to building your workforce. Both approaches require an investment of time and money, but with the right tools, you can empower managers beyond your HR department to adopt internal mobility and take ownership of developing a stronger workforce from within.
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