Internal Mobility: The Antidote to Losing Talent
Why its so hard, and what managers can do about it
Source: LinkedIn
As companies look for ways to deal with attrition with the Great Resignation and Great Reshuffle, one obvious answer lies within promoting internal mobility and internal career transitions.
According to LinkedIn’s research, organizations with high internal mobility can retain employees for almost twice as long as those with low mobility. One of the seminal studies of internal mobility vs. external hiring found internal hires outperform external hires.
Furthermore, many employees are open to moving internally into a new role. In fact,
The Challenges with Internal Mobility in Organizations
If so many employees are interested in looking internal and companies are aware of the host of costs associated with hiring new talent, how come internal mobility isn’t more prevalent? Well, it's a lot harder than it seems. Research from Deloitte shows that while 76% of organizations see internal mobility as critical, yet just 40% are ready for it, and only 6% believe they are great at it. So what seems to be the issue?
1) Lack of Visibility - This sounds simple, but while companies spend and invest in trying to recruit top external talent, they often underinvest in recruiting their own talent in their company. Even with internal job boards, finding out about new roles can often be challenging for people within an organization. Some companies are trying to fix this, and are spinning up internal recruiting teams, but many still have a long way to go in making the opportunities visible.
2)Employees Don’t Feel Empowered - If career development or learning is not something that is prioritized, talked about and valued at a company, it's going to be hard for employees to feel empowered to raise their hands to openly communicate that they are looking to make an internal career transition. Instead, they’d prefer to job search in the dark, due to the lack of trust that exists in the current environment
3)Managers Won’t Allow It - Managers, afraid of losing talent (commonly known as talent hoarding) don’t create an environment where it feels safe to want to look for another role. In some cases, they actively prevent it, for fear of losing good talent to other teams. Furthermore, Internal Mobility is commonly a sensitive topic between managers and other managers. The notion of wanting to depart from a team is highly delicate, and employees might find it difficult to approach the topic. Finally, managers often forget to make space, or proactively engage their employees in discussions around what career development or growth looks like for each individual employee.
3)Leaders Don’t Promote it - According to a LinkedIn survey, the #1 barrier of the lack of internal mobility was due to “managers don’t want to let go of good talent.” While it can be easy to put the blame on managers, managers always act in the interests of what they see gets valued by leaders or by rewards. If leaders don’t articulate that internal mobility is a priority, or put into place metrics to track it, no manager is going to invest in it.
4)There aren’t metrics that measure it - What gets measured gets managed, and dollars speak for themselves. If a company doesn’t put in metrics around talent retention or career growth, managers (and employees) won’t think it's valued and thus won’t invest time in it.
5)We’re using old ways of thinking
Many companies still operate under the functional org chart when it comes to thinking about internal mobility. We live in a cross-functional and continuously changing environment where employees are regularly using skills and competencies that span across numerous functions and roles, but when we evaluate talent on whether they can switch into a new opportunity, we evaluate them against a role or org chart, and not the value of the skills they use.
Examples of Internal Mobility
My Mom spent her entire career spanning three decades at one company, spanning multiple roles, divisions and bosses. Each time she was ready for a new role, she had a conversation with her manager, who often helped her find the role or personally made an intro to securing it. When I was evaluating job offers coming out of college after the Great Recession in 2008, the University Recruiter at GE told me that if I took the job I would be “set for my career.”
Gone are the days of lifelong employment at one company, and with that, went away many of the investments companies used to make in career mobility and development. Fortunately, there are still some companies that have prioritized internal mobility as a talent strategy, and are doing innovative things to continue to retain and invest in their workforce.
Unilever
At Unilever, employees have access to FLEX, an internal online talent marketplace that allows employees to build a profile, highlight their skills, and search and identify part-time projects to work on across the entire company. This platform solves a number of problems. First, in terms of identifying flex projects and assignments. With the power of the platform, it surfaces projects that someone can sign up for. Secondly, it allows employees to post the skills they have, so someone can search for talent and find the right people with the right skills. Finally, with the help of Gloat, an internal mobility functionality, it allows for AI-driven recommendations for employees, augmenting their own interests with data-driven insights to point them in the right direction.
As of 2021, it’s been used by 65,000 of its employees worldwide across 100+ countries. An example of this in action comes from one of their DE&I Leads, Vanessa Otake. Vanessa started her career working as an engineer and in technical-focused R&D research, before utilizing the platform to take a project to pursue her interests in DE&I, which led to her eventually taking on a DE&I role.
Grab
Grab, a taxi hailing platform in Southeast Asia, decided to revamp its internal mobility program to improve awareness of career opportunities and allow employees to discover new opportunities for career growth. One common challenge that often gets in the way of internal mobility are managers’ concerns about finding replacements for people who move to new roles. To alleviate this concern and to reduce the time (and cost) to hire, Grab allocated time of its recruiters to helping managers source and find new talent to roles that were vacated. This helps reduce “talent hoarding” and gives managers the confidence that even if someone leaves, they can find someone quickly.
Within one month of the initial launch, Grab’s internal mobility program received 25% more applications than prior. One employee, Hannah Vergara noted that as a result of the program, she had 3 roles in five years, and felt the program gave her the ability to advance in her career without having to start from scratch. “My manager and previous managers in Grab have always been very supportive to me,” she said.
Capital One
When something is a core value of the company that is rewarded, it gets lived out. After speaking with several Capital One employees, it's clear that learning, growth and career development are all critical values of the organization. As a result, it's very common for A) managers to ask you about what you want to do and B) for people to move internally from position to position and team to team. If you read their Glassdoor reviews you will see a similar sentiment, as with other reviews from employees.
One example I heard was that in many companies where career mobility is common, employees usually identify the role or opportunity they want, and then take mini steps toward getting there such as enrolling in an online course, doing a job shadow, etc. At Capital One, a number of employees told me that in many cases, instead of just simply dipping your toes into something, you were encouraged to just plunge right in and take that role that you were interested in.
This is a unique circumstance, but ultimately it encourages and makes it safe for employees to test and try their interests and curiosities. In many ways, this is the holy grail: A culture where internal mobility is rewarded and championed empowers managers to proactively have conversations around career and growth with their employees, and the employees feel safe and empowered to vocalize their interests and desires. To be sure, this can go to an extreme, and I did hear of some examples where people moved so many times over the course of a year that their performance history was lost, but in many ways this kind of alignment between process, people, and culture is exactly what you need to make it happen
What Managers Can Do To Retain Talent
Ultimately, leaders must create the space and investment for internal mobility programs to thrive. And while managers do not control all of these decisions, they still need to figure out ways to retain and engage top talent, especially amidst the great resignation. So what can managers do, to try to retain talent and help their employees grow their careers within the organization?
1)Have more frequent career conversations with your direct reports
One challenge that gets in the way of internal mobility comes with logistics and planning. This can go away when you have notice and awareness in advance, which allows you to plan. The best way to do this, is to regularly have conversations with your employees about their career development and aspirations. When you know that your employee wants to look for a new role next year, that gives you ample time to find potential replacements. Your willingness to help open doors and invest in your employees may have side effects greater than helping you plan - they might actually want to stay longer.
As a manager, your goal is to help your team achieve their desired goals and outcomes. Inevitably, this involves some standard work that you know you must accomplish, but it also leaves for your own judgement and creativity to identify projects that need to be done by your team. By using your judgment and creativity to scope and select projects that align to the goals and interests from your team members, your employees can develop and be engaged while remaining in place.
2)Promote self-awareness, reflection and learning
In a busy world, it can be easy to get so busy that you forget to reflect on what you did, what you achieved and what you learn. Encourage and direct your team members to regularly reflect and self-assess what they have done and learned, adn to share that with you as the team lead. This will give you more insights into how people are progressing, what they are enjoying (or not enjoying) and in many cases, further their learning. What this also does is it gives you more signals, that you can use to continue helping your employees grow and feel engaged.
3)Setup Projects for Internal Employees to Try on For Size
Google has famously pioneered 20% projects as well as it’s bungee program. These are temporary projects/roles for other employees to take on a “side project” on top of their existing work. Creating projects as well as letting your employees take on these projects, is a great way to retain employees, or allow your current ones to grow in their existing role.
4)Become a Talent Magnet
The reality is that your employees will eventually leave you. Instead of waiting to fill future roles, go on the offensive by becoming a talent magnet, and being a manager that people want to work for. Proactively setting aside time each quarter to cultivate new relationships with other employees in your organization who one day might want to join your team.
Inevitably, attrition is going to happen, and some of that is out of your control. Furthermore, while your company should invest in the right technology, processes and policies to promote internal mobility, you can start today in your efforts to retain your talent by understanding some of the common challenges, and proactively finding ways to engage and retain your existing employees.