Are the candidates you seek right under your nose? Internal mobility can tap into the hidden talent within your own organization to fill those vacancies.
It’s a tough job market out there… for employers.
With unemployment rates at record lows, top professionals in many industries can afford to be picky about who they work for.
How can employers compete? Well, start by looking from within.
The following guide explores how your business can take advantage of the skills your people already possess, and how you can create an internal mobility policy that helps your organization thrive.
Internal mobility is the capacity for employees to move to a different role within your organization. Unfortunately, many businesses neglect improving this organizational trait. Their hiring policies are directed solely toward finding the perfect external candidate.
But when you’re competing for top talent, you can’t always find someone who’s ready to hit the ground running, particularly for roles requiring a high degree of skill. And even if you can, that candidate will likely need some time to get oriented with your processes and integrated into the company culture.
This conundrum alone makes it worthwhile to explore what prioritizing internal mobility as an expected part of the employee lifecycle can do for your business.
Internal movement in a work setting can happen in various ways:
As of September 2023, the unemployment rate in America was 3.8%, close to the historical low of 2.5% in May 1953.
In other words, it’s not an employer’s market.
Businesses that don’t look inward for possible candidates are likely to struggle to fill all their vacancies. At the very least, they may have to spend a lot more time and effort finding and enticing external candidates.
But that’s not all. There’s also the question of retention. If you want to hold on to your best people, and avoid recruiting in the first place, offering internal opportunities is an excellent approach.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the main benefits of prioritizing internal mobility in your business.
Aside from helping a company navigate a challenging job market and maintaining low employee turnover, a robust internal mobility plan has many other advantages for the organization.
When putting your program in place, use the following best practices to help maximize the benefits the program will eventually provide:
Before getting into the nitty gritty, make sure you and all other involved stakeholders have a clear, shared strategy in mind. Explain how your internal mobility policy will exist in your workplace and the impact you expect it to have.
Your exact strategy will depend on your organization’s specific needs, but might include:
Career development doesn’t need to be left to chance. Creating and implementing a career pathing strategy will create a more formal structure for internal mobility throughout your organization.
This will, in turn, give you an excellent foundation for mapping career development opportunities and more prescriptive recommendations for how employees can move up or laterally within your organization.
For maximum impact, synthesize your career pathing framework within each employee’s individual development plan. This way, each employee is aware of the opportunities available to them and can chart concrete next steps for advancement (if they wish).
Your middle managers are your eyes and ears, so for your mobility program to work, they need to have support recognizing and nurturing talented individuals.
Make skills assessment training mandatory for these managers to ensure they know how to spot valuable skills not immediately relevant to an employee’s current role. Being able to identify skills that could be valuable in other departments or roles will give your program an enormous advantage.
One of the best ways to prioritize internal mobility is to guarantee a constant supply of talented internal candidates. Instead of making a shopping list of employee qualities for external candidates, make a training regimen that creates internal candidates who can fill any skill gaps your organization faces.
Encourage an “internal-first” policy. Take steps to build an internal openings database to advertise openings to your employees.
If you have one central hub where anyone can share and check for available positions and training opportunities, it’s much easier for your workforce to be motivated and apply for these positions.
When you implement changes in the workplace, you’re bound to encounter challenges. Creating internal mobility policies and programs is no different. Luckily, we have a few solutions for the roadblocks you may encounter:
Roadblock |
Solution |
Lack of available skills within current workforce |
This could either be because the skills genuinely aren’t there or they're present but you can’t find them. Creating training opportunities as part of an internal mobility program can help you find staff with skills adjacent to the ones you need. Better yet, the more developed your programs become, the less likely you are to find yourself in that latter situation. |
Managerial resistance to change |
Winning your managers over means pointing out the advantages their own teams could gain through internal mobility. Recording and sharing the personal experiences of employees who successfully made an internal move in your organization can persuade managers. |
The program’s time and budgetary requirements |
Creating a robust strategy and program will take time and money. Not having either, however, will probably cost you even more in the long run. It helps to review important hiring metrics like time to hire and cost per hire, comparing the numbers for internal vs. external hires. Having data to back up your strategy can help justify the investment. |
Paylocity's all-in-one HR and Payroll software is equipped with a full suite of tools designed to make internal mobility a breeze. Check out features like:
Request a demo of Paylocity to learn more about how our HR and Payroll software can take your organization to the next level.