Internal Mobility: Whose Responsibility Is It, Anyway?

Internal mobility is crucial to building the workforce of the future and creating career growth for your employees.

You’ve read about internal mobility in important industry publications. You've heard about it at conferences.

Why? It’s the modern talent strategy for the modern talent professional.

You’ve even brought up a few dazzling initiatives to your superiors. And what better time to do so? As we head into 2020 and beyond, the future of work is already here. The demand has never been higher for innovative HR solutions.

SEE ALSO: The perfect strategy guide for internal mobility in 2020

For large companies, there’s one problem. Given that internal mobility is a more modern HR initiative, it’s not usually somebody’s main responsibility.

This is a challenge that we see all the time. Every company has departments in the following areas (among others):

  • Talent acquisition

  • Employee relations

  • Payroll

Yet, most of them do not have an “internal mobility” team. All that said, the problems that good internal mobility can solve include:

  • Better employee retention

  • Providing a better employee experience

  • Saving money on recruiting and training new employees

Everyone knows that a company is only as good as its people. So, if these are the problems at stake, everyone should have a vested interest in making it work.

The million-dollar question: How do HR professionals go about overcoming this? Who should take ownership of “internal mobility” if it isn’t a core HR department yet?

Who’s Your Internal Mobility “Champion”?

For those who are reading and want to champion internal mobility at their company, you have our support!

For those who are reading and want to champion internal mobility at their company, you have our support!

Having a “champion” is mission-critical to ensuring cultural buy-in. Without it, it'll be very difficult to promote more internal career movement.

The person or team that “owns” internal mobility depends on your organizational priorities. Are you focusing on retaining employees? Or reducing HR operating costs and helping out talent acquisition?


Need Help Deciding Who Should Own Internal Mobility At Your Company?


If you’re reading this, chances are you believe in internal mobility as a talent strategy. Chances are, it’s not your only responsibility. So, how does one find the time to champion internal mobility on top of their regular duties?

Creating an Internal Mobility “Team”

So, you chose (or found someone) to be the internal mobility champion. Or better yet, you are the internal mobility champion. Fantastic!

At Paddle HR, we love cutting-edge ideas when it comes to changing the HR game. If there is no “internal mobility” team, why not create one?

We also believe in building agile teams that are small, but mighty. Again, good internal mobility solves many organizational problems. It makes sense that everyone should contribute to making it work.

Your internal mobility team can include members of a few HR departments, such as:

  • Talent Acquisition: At Paddle HR, we’ve seen TA teams turn to internal mobility as a talent “acquisition” strategy. The reason for this is the overwhelming business case for doing so. The starting salary of an external hire is about 18-20% more than internal candidates.

  • Organizational Effectiveness: Spending less money on recruiting and training new employees is operational efficiency at its finest.

  • Employee Experience And/Or Total Rewards: Good internal mobility creates an environment where employees can learn and grow. This helps improve the employee experience.

  • Career Development: If the problem is talent retention, part of the solution is talent development.

"94 percent of employees say that they would stay at a company longer if it invested in helping them learn more skills." - LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report

Once you find your internal mobility “team”, it’s time to get the team and the company bought in. Without true commitment and resourcing, these initiatives could fall to the wayside.

Resourcing, Buy-in and Accountability

Be strategic and armed with the right data when getting buy-in for your internal mobility initiatives. If you’re trying to involve somebody from the career development team, you'd want to cite the LinkedIn report from above.

This is an example of how you find synergy between an internal mobility initiative and an existing HR initiative. Most organizations already support career development.

If identifying skill gaps is a big priority for your organization, the resources and buy-in from senior leaders will be there.

SEE ALSO Better Understand Your Skill Gaps With Paddle HR’s Internal Mobility Platform

Another example? Involving the talent acquisition and employee engagement teams usually make sense. We all know how expensive it is when employees quit.

“On average it costs a company 6 to 9 months of an employee's salary to replace him or her. For an employee making $60,000 per year, that comes out to $30,000 - $45,000 in recruiting and training costs.” - Source: SHRM

It's in everybody’s best interests to make sure that employees have internal growth opportunities. According to Gallup, lack of “Career advancement or promotional opportunities” is the No.1 reason why people leave their jobs.

It’s like we’ve said before: a company is only as good as its people. If people are leaving and there’s no clear plan to get the right talent in the door (or create it through training), then everyone has a problem.

Internal mobility is a modern talent management concept. It has the potential to affect every phase of business within an organization. There’s been a lot of noise about it, but which companies are out there taking action? Who's making an effort to create better career paths for their employees?

To become one of those companies, it takes a champion, a team and the organizational buy-in to make it happen.

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