Internal mobility can be key to retaining employees with critical skills

Unvaried work can translate into a lack of commitment or interest in employees. They are seeking deeper meaning in their work.

The idea of keeping employees with critical skills is highly competitive in today’s world, and this means that employees are on the constant lookout for a job to reinvent themselves.

But it is not necessary that they want to leave their current employer, because they want to work elsewhere. If an organization enables internal mobility in its employees this means that there’s much scope for them to rejuvenate their tired brain muscles.

On the other hand, organizations must strive to create a human connection with their workers to understand where exactly they can use the existing resources. As organizations are globalizing, there is a need for enterprise-wide talent mobility – a term not new to HR and talent acquisition people.

The Time Magazine reported in 2015 that between 40% and 60% of external hires aren’t successful, even if it comes from your competition. This year in 2019, when Deloitte launched the Global Human Capital Trends, where they’ve specifically mentioned Internal Mobility as a one of the 4 factors in Future of HR, along with Talent Access, HR Cloud  and Learning.

However, the applicability of an effective talent management is often questionable at an organizational levels. In 2015, Doug Sagham, VP of Enterprise Analytics, and Piyush Mathur, the SVP of People Analytics at Nielsen, used HR Data to find how their employees can be kept on board. “Though getting promoted pushes employees to stay, so do lateral moves – in a pretty significant way,” Sagham said.

The Challenges

The incredible motivator of changing roles can be topic of contentious debate. While it has taken decades for organizations to build the pyramids of hierarchy, it is difficult to break it with a sudden introduction of effective internal mobility.

Being modeled around hierarchical structures, career and promotion models, many employees have worked hard to thrive within the organization.

To make an organization agile, mobility programs needs to become seamless then it currently is in most places. It shouldn’t be made to look like a major change of roles, and employees at all levels of the pyramid should have the opportunity to explore within the organization.

It is a proven fact that corporations can avoid costs by increasing retention through internal mobility initiatives, as well as help increase the value of intellectual capital within an organization.