Why Internal Mobility Is Key To Building the Workforce of the Future

This article was originally published in HR Technologist

While many fear the future of work, the honest truth is that it is here already. Companies are in a high state of anxiety, trying to figure how best to adapt and ensure talent gaps are filled... Imbalances in the market such as income equality and the ratio of capable talent to high-skill jobs have rendered traditional hiring and recruiting practices ineffective. All of this is true, even without the looming impacts of how automation and climate change will further impact the job market and the nature of work itself.

SEE ALSO: The Definitive Guide to Improving Internal Mobility At Your Company

This is a mystery that stumps the C-suite and HR professionals across the world. In this post, we’re sharing why internal mobility is the key to building the workforce of the future.

These days, employees crave one thing: the ability to grow their career.

What is Internal Mobility? And Why Is It Important?

Internal mobility refers to the movement of employees across roles or a complete occupation change within the same company. According to a Wharton study, internal hires perform decidedly better than external counterparts on their first few years at a new role. They also require, approximately, 20 per cent less in salary.

It’s also crucial to keeping your best talent around. A survey conducted by Gallup revealed that “a lack of career advancement or promotional opportunities” was the No.1 reason people leave their jobs.

How Will Internal Mobility Help Build the Workforce of The Future?

"Internal mobility is a dynamic internal process for moving talent from role to role - at the leadership, professional, and operational levels." - Bersin by Deloitte

As it relates to the future of work, internal mobility is the key to bridging the obvious talent gap between high-skill jobs and the right talent.

The first step towards building a futureproof workforce is hiring talent, period. The problem? It’s a buyers’ market for skilled workers.

A failure to embrace internal mobility will result in increased operating costs for business leaders and HR professionals, including:

  • Recruiting and training new employees

  • Lost productivity after employees leave

  • Interruptions in client deliverables

Here are the three integral ways internal mobility will help businesses prepare for the workforce of the future.

Making the “gig economy” mentality work for large companies

The gig economy is here, and it’s here to stay. Your best employees probably have “side hustles”. But we’re not talking about “temps” or outsourcing jobs to external agencies.

On why employees pursue freelance work as a side hustle:

“They might want to explore whether an idea or a service or a product that they have is a viable business. Or they might want to explore an area of interest or they might want to gain another skill or expand their network.” - Diane Mulcahy, “The Gig Economy”

We’re talking about utilizing your existing talent pool for special projects and part-time work. If the marketing department is running a big campaign and it’s all hands on deck, why not pull in skills from other departments to help?

The opportunity to leverage ‘latent’ skills across departments is critical to remaining competitive in the new economy. Chances are, there are administrative or low point-of-access tasks that can add value in other business units or functions. This also exposes your existing workforce to different roles, allowing them to find a sense of growth by working in different departments.

Other mobility arrangements such as secondments and rotation programs also follow this same paradigm: that in-the-box, linear career paths are not fulfilling for many of today’s young people. This is especially true if your company is looking to attract millennials, who are increasingly prioritizing learning and growth in their careers.
SEE ALSO: How To Create “Side Hustle”-like Growth For Your Employees

Reskilling and retraining existing workers

“By 2030, as many as 375 million workers—or roughly 14% of the global workforce—may need to switch occupational categories as digitization, automation, and advances in artificial intelligence disrupt the world of work. “ - Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation, McKinsey

While we don’t live in a world of killer robots, automation is taking its toll. A study by McKinsey shows that out of about 60% of all occupations, 30% of their tasks are technically automatable.

In other words, for most employees, a third of their job is redundant and replaceable.

In the past, this realization would have triggered what we call “layoff culture”, where large corporations look at overhauling personnel through layoffs and external recruitment.

But as large companies such as AT&T have discovered, it’s simply better business to move and reskill existing employees. And they didn’t just talk about it, they spent over $1 billion to retrain their 250,000 employees.

They’re not the only ones. According to another study by McKinsey, 62 per cent of private-sector executives “believe they will need to retrain or replace more than a quarter of their workforce between now and 2023.”

So what’s the solution? Since, in the eyes of employers, colleges are failing to prepare graduates with the required skills, we’re starting to see large companies across the world invest in online courses that retrain their existing workforce.

Improving employee engagement and reduce turnover

“48 percent of millennials said they will look for a new job in the next three months, and 56 percent begin their search in the next year” - Spherion

Building a cohesive, skilled workforce is hard enough, but it’s made even harder when you consider that employee turnover rates are at an all-time high.

“Businesses with a strong learning culture enjoy employee engagement and retention rates around 30-50 percent higher than those that don’t” - Robert Half

Good talent leaves for the opportunity to learn. Employees who have the opportunity to learn new skills in a flexible environment are incredibly engaged and thus, less likely to quit and pursue other opportunities.

We’ve established that internal mobility helps build skilled workers with diverse skill sets. Take Ingersoll Rand, who invested in an analytics-based technology solution to develop an internal career path solution and increased their employee engagement by 30 per cent.

Delivering internal career pathing solutions inspires employee engagement and commitment from your existing workforce.

Culture and infrastructure of mobility, paired with an effective up-skilling effort, will prepare your business to better react to broader shifts in the market... It shows that you’re an agile organization that’s willing to teach your employees the skills of the future. It shows candidates that your company takes progression seriously.

The bottom line, it helps maximize the talent you have and prepares you for the future.

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