JR is a talent leader with 20+ years of experience, VP of North America at Reejig and an advocate for sustainable talent strategies.
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Employee retention is a problem, with employee turnover costing U.S. businesses $1 trillion every year. People teams are well aware of the financial strain this can cause and have prioritized improving retention and engagement as a result. This shift in market conditions has led HR and talent management leaders to focus on more effective internal mobility policies to keep employees engaged and reduce the overall impact and expense of a reduction in force (RIF).
While no single strategy can ward off a restructuring or reorganization, internal mobility and talent redeployment can support your organization’s growth and innovation, avoiding the need to downsize and retaining employees by offering skill development pathways.
What is internal mobility?
Internal mobility is simply orchestrating the movement of talent within an organization. That movement is really broad in its description but includes career development, employees moving laterally or vertically within the organization and how we ensure that these opportunities are available to our workforce.
Internal mobility has benefits beyond ensuring you’re prepared for whatever the labor market looks like in the coming years. Consider the challenge of reskilling half of your workforce with entirely new skills to stay competitive. The World Economic Forum’s "Future of Jobs Report 2020" indicates that 50% of all employees will need to reskill by 2025. Whether employees find growth opportunities within your organization or outside of it depends on your ability to offer a career path that will meet their needs.
Who should own internal mobility?
The short answer is that someone should. In many organizations, no one owns it. I have a bias because I sat in talent acquisition and I owned talent mobility. I saw the recruitment function as a way to bring expertise to mobility from Day 1, whether by talking to an employee and giving them some career coaching or by helping them understand the structure, roles or selection process. If you can convert your talent acquisition team to advocates of internal mobility, you're expanding that to almost every hiring manager across the organization.
Why talent acquisition? The recruitment function can bring expertise into internal mobility, and talent acquisition can be the voice of mobility. Your talent acquisition teams are already experts at open positions and requirements, which makes them quick studies when it comes to your internal mobility efforts with the right training, direction and resources.
Successful employee retention begins with candidate experience and that sits with talent acquisition. Part of that experience is showcasing what your organization can offer its employees, and career development via internal mobility is a benefit that attracts talent, especially among Millennials and Gen-Z candidates.
According to a 2021 study from IBM’s Institute for Business Value, "workers placed work-life balance (51%) and career advancement opportunities (43%) at the top of their list of priorities, with compensation and benefits (41%) and employer ethics and values (41%) following close behind. And more than a third of employees named continuous learning opportunities (36%) and organizational stability (34%) as key engagement factors."
In a November SHRM Research Institute report, "Better Workplaces on a Budget Recommendations," respondents cited a lack of career development and advancement as the second-highest reason for leaving a company. It was also listed in the top three by 61% of HR professionals and as the top reason by 21%. The top recommendation for addressing this concern is increasing promotions from within and publicizing these promotions to others in the company so workers can see realistic advancement opportunities.
Creating A Culture Of Sustainable Talent Mobility
We want to ensure that everyone reaches their potential. And in order to do that, we have to create a sustainable framework to do it right; otherwise, it creates a lot of waste. Many organizations are focused on sustainability but are overlooking talent as a way to contribute to that sustainability. Internal mobility is more than a work perk; it’s a sustainable way to create organizational stability and growth and engagement in your employees.
For example, from a tactical perspective, most recruiters are rewarded for hiring externally and the performance frameworks for recruiters are often focused on that, which means they essentially get penalized for hiring internally. This is where the change from a philosophical perspective should occur: If talent acquisition is to own internal mobility, recruiters must get the same amount of recognition and performance rewards for hiring someone internally as they do for hiring external candidates. If you want to accelerate this, you would reward internal recruiting even more.
Orchestrating the movement of talent within an organization is the starting point for any company. Creating an ecosystem and a culture that allows people to grow and upskill begins with talent acquisition.
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