There are many different reasons for people to want to leave their current job, whether it’s to expand their skillset or flex their existing skills in a new environment. In a nutshell, people want to do what they're good at.
The challenge for employers is finding ways to keep employees from getting bored and losing them in a competitive talent market. To keep its best and brightest talent, organizations need to foster career advancement and provide opportunities for employees to grow and enhance their knowledge, skills and experience.
The answer to retaining your top talent is not necessarily a move up the corporate ladder. Rather than upward mobility, many employees are searching for internal mobility. This fresh take on performance management plays a key part in successful talent acquisition, employee retention, and overall business success.
Ensuring employees feel that they have a future within your organization is crucial for maximizing productivity and employee engagement. Having career management discussions and providing opportunities for employees to progress in their careers and to grow and enhance their knowledge, skills and experience is critical for job satisfaction, performance, recruiting and retention.
So, what does internal mobility look like? Here are six tips to help your organization build its internal mobility programs:
1. Set Clear Goals and Metrics:
Identify one or two specific goals that you want your internal mobility program to address, such as improving engagement or reducing high potential employee turnover. Next, settle on metrics that track back to goals and identify what data you will need to track and analyze in order to measure success. Then follow through.
2. Be Transparent:
Clearly articulate that internal mobility is important to your organization and why by translating your goals into a policy.
3. Make it Part of Your Culture:
Build and invest in career transition, learning, mentoring and coaching in order to ensure sustainability and the long-term success of your internal mobility initiatives.
4. Help Managers Identify High Potential Employees:
High potential employees have the ability, aspiration, values and commitment to grow within your organization and be successful in more critical positions. However, not everyone wants to manage people. By identifying who the high potentials and high performers are in your organization, leaders and HR can best identify which type of mobility will best suit their development needs, respectively.
5. Provide Learning Opportunities that Make Sense:
Lateral or internal moves often require additional training to prepare an employee for new responsibilities and skills. Ensure that these learning opportunities are flexible and agile so your employees can really take advantage of them.
6. Encourage Multi-Directional Career Transitions:
Up is not the only way to go. As the organizational chart becomes flatter with more collaboration and cross-functional teams, enable your employees to apply their skills and talents where they make the most sense.
Internal mobility is a win-win for employers and employees alike - employees are able to continue to expand and enhance their careers while the organization is able to retain top talent. Work with employees to create a career path that meets the needs and goals of both the organization and the employee.
If an employee within your organization is looking for a change, don't wait for them to go looking somewhere else. Show them the possibilities you have right within your organization.
