Recent studies have shown that the true cost of hiring new talent - including recruitment costs, initial salary, training, and employer contributions such as tax and insurance - can cost up to three to four times as much as the annual salary of a new hire. It’s no wonder then, that retaining talent is a priority for many organizations.
Talent mobility is a tactic that can help you do just that. With a proper plan for talent mobility, allowing internal talent to move and take on new roles within your organization, you can retain valuable employees and their knowledge of the business whilst expanding skillsets and providing rewarding experiences and opportunities. Focusing on developing internal talent is directly linked to improved employee wellbeing and productivity, and employees offered development opportunities are 34% more likely to stay in their job.
In this guide, we’ll talk more about the different types of talent mobility, the benefits of focusing on internal development as well as the challenges, and advise how to develop and implement a successful talent mobility strategy.
What is Talent Mobility?
Talent mobility is an employee development strategy that identifies employee skills and strengths and uses this information to mobilize them through the organization to get the most out of their skillset and experience while further developing them.
This strategy ensures you value the abilities of the talent within our organization. Without it, you risk stagnating and losing committed employees who understand our business inside-out and know the short and long term goals you’re working towards.
Talent mobility is an integral part of wider talent management strategies such as leadership development and employee training. It plays a key part in building leadership development pipelines, helping identify suitable candidates for future leadership, and supporting them as they move to various roles across the business in order to finesse their skills and expand their knowledge.
Talent mobility has an important part to play in employee wellbeing too. New challenges, visible advancement, and opportunities to learn new skills - all of which come as a result of mobilizing talent - boost employee engagement and morale.
Types of Talent Mobility
There are a few different ways you can mobilize talent, each of which serves a different purpose. Understanding these is critical to getting the most out of moving employees.
Internal Talent Mobility
- In large organizations and groups made up of multiple companies and entities, you may want to move someone only within the specific arm of the business that they already belong to.
- This mobility retains and expands knowledge within the organization and improves employee engagement and retention.
Cross-functional Mobility
- With cross-functional mobility, you shift employees across different departments to broaden their skill sets and knowledge.
- This approach creates a more agile, capable workforce who work flexibly with other departments due to the rounded knowledge and awareness they have of different departments and roles. It’s a great way to diversify thinking and build resilience to challenging market conditions.
Horizontal Mobility
- Talent mobility isn’t necessarily about promotions - lateral moves within the organization, perhaps from one entity to another, expand employees’ experience.
- Although many employees want to progress vertically, horizontal mobility can be used as a first step towards promotion as leaders can show their employees that they’re giving them the chance to develop towards that progression point, aiding retention.
Vertical Mobility
- This is what many typically think of when it comes to talent mobility: Promotions and moves towards increasing seniority and responsibility within the organization.
- Upward mobility supports leadership development and succession planning, so care should be taken that the right employees are set on the path towards internal promotion and are motivated to continue progressing.
Global Talent Mobility
- For those who are open to it, relocating employees internationally to take on new roles has its advantages.
- It can be beneficial to move an existing employee - nationally or internationally - as they are a known entity or know the organization and can hit the ground running where a new hire may need longer and cost more.
Virtual Talent Mobility
- Virtual talent mobility is an increasingly popular means of bridging the gap between the desire to have someone with a particular skillset fill a role in a specific location without having to relocate them there, allowing career progression without physical relocation.
- Remote work is increasingly popular but it's important to consider the impact this can have on team dynamics and communication, all of which can be overcome with a proper plan and tools in place.
Developmental Talent Mobility
- Short-term assignments - often called secondments - are a hands-on way for employees to develop their skills.
- Short-term assignments in other branches, members of the organization, or even simply between departments can increase the speed of employee growth with limited impact on the organization.
The Benefits of Talent Mobility
Organizations that embrace talent mobility have a skills-based mindset - they recognize that the specific skills and traits of their employees offer value beyond those listed in their job description.
One of the main benefits of viewing the workforce through this lens is employee retention, with 92% of respondents of the EY Mobility Reimagined Survey saying that aligning mobility strategy to organizational objectives helps in attracting and retaining top talent and 78% of employers see a positive return on investment from their mobility program.
These organizations are more agile and resilient too. Through mobilizing talent to strategically widen their knowledge and increase their skill set, organizations better prepare themselves for sudden changes in the marketplace. Their employees feel confident in taking on new challenges and are able to think laterally when faced with a problem just as Microsoft did thanks to clear communication and employee polling during the shift to remote and hybrid working during the pandemic.
Any robust internal leadership pipeline should include role mobility. Having identified a future leadership pool, be sure to offer these employees opportunities in different departments, functions, and locations, as well as stretching them with secondments, to flesh out their skills and knowledge of the company.
Talent mobility is cost-effective too - it’s far cheaper to promote internally from within your current talent pool than to recruit. Although there is some cost associated with talent mobility itself as you invest in moving and educating employees, you see a return on investment when they stay with you and bring their bolstered skills and experience to new roles.
The Risks of Talent Mobility
Despite these many benefits, there are also a few risks to consider when it comes to talent mobility.
Internal visibility issues, for instance. It’s difficult to identify the employees who are ready for new opportunities and to ensure that you move them into the right opportunity. You could get this wrong and demoralize a good employee or give an opportunity to someone who quickly decides to move on elsewhere. 360-degree feedback and performance reviews can help mitigate this risk, as well as other assessments such as behavioral and personality tests, but you need to have these processes established well before you consider moving talent.
Additionally, managers may be reluctant to release their top performers to new positions and may block attempts to do so. You can ease their reticence by ensuring proper training and development is in place to prevent skills gaps during transitions.
Although visible talent mobility can be positive for an organization as it shows employees that opportunities exist within the company, it can lead to internal conflict. Some may feel they have been overlooked or are more deserving and you should be open to having honest conversations about why they weren’t chosen and what they can do to work towards these opportunities. You also need to put processes in place that ensure any talent mobilization is equitable and reflective of the diversity within our organization.
Developing an Effective Talent Mobility Strategy
You can’t just start moving employees around left, right, and center even if we’ve recognized they have something to offer. To get the most out of creating new opportunities for these employees, you must take a strategic approach, one that aligns with our business objectives and can help you deliver them.
Leaders and managers may feel they have a sense of who would be valuable in a different role but you have to back up any decisions with insights gained through data analysis. This data may come from 360-degree feedback assessments and performance reviews which show how an employee performs against their KPIs, but other psychometric analyses such as behavioral assessments, personality assessments, and aptitude tests, will help you round out that picture. You should collate this information and use it to guide mobility decisions within a fair framework that supports growth for employees and the business.
Implementing a Talent Mobility Program
Successful talent mobility programs start by:
- Communicating the benefits and opportunities of talent mobility to all employees, so they know of the chance to move between roles in a variety of directions that they may find engaging.
- Providing training, mentorship, and support to employees making transitions. you want your mobilized talent to succeed and learn new skills that will benefit the organization so it’s up to you to help them thrive by offering appropriate training in the new position, potentially through mentorship from someone already experienced in the role.
Talent Mobility Goals and Strategy
Talent mobility plans shouldn’t exist in a void. They should be approached strategically as a means of serving short and long-term business objectives.
An example: You may have a top-level objective to ensure you have a well-prepared new senior leadership team ready to take on positions that you know will be vacated in the next few years due to retirement. Talent mobility is an effective means of developing leadership pipelines and supporting you with this objective as long as you use data-driven insights to find the right candidates and move them to roles, cross-functionally and otherwise, that prepare them to take on the mantle of leadership. You can place them in roles that help them develop the skills you may otherwise be losing and increase their knowledge of various operations within the business at the same time.
Talent mobility can be used strategically to support growth plans involving new technology, new markets, and uncertain trading conditions. It’s all about utilizing the skills and knowledge that already exist within the business and spreading them among high-performers who remain engaged and confident about their ability to take on new challenges.
As with all strategies, it’s important to allocate time to monitoring the success of the strategy and adjusting where needed. You must keep tabs on those you have moved to new positions and collect feedback about the process from them, asking whether they felt supported, whether they received the right training, and how they are now able to better support business objectives.
The Importance Of A Talent Mobility Framework
Just as with any other HR process, it’s important to put a proper framework in place to manage talent mobility so you can monitor potential moves, ongoing moves, and the success of the program. A talent mobility framework should support employee mobility at all levels with integrated behavioral assessments and other tools designed to make the process efficient. It should also cover the transition process and support any training requirements.
The framework should also align with organizational culture, using familiar brand language and outlining goals that resonate with everything else employees interact with across the organization. The talent mobility process shouldn’t feel like an outlier juxtaposed against other work and talent management processes; it should complement those things.
Gaining Leadership Buy-In For Internal Talent Mobility Programs
Leadership buy-in is an essential first step in getting talent mobility programs off the ground. HR teams need to show leaders that investing in skill development and cross-departmental mobility creates a valuable long-term return on investment when employees stay longer, can do more for the organization, and are effective problem solvers with a diverse skill set. Senior leaders will want to know how the process is going to be managed and what time and resources are needed, as well as how the program will be tracked and evaluated. All of this can be supported with structured frameworks, data-driven insight assessments, and management tools that can be demonstrated to SLTs to gain buy-in.
Hurdles to Talent Mobility
Although there are many advantages to committing to talent mobility, it may not all be plain sailing. Some challenges include:
- Internal resistance such as senior leaders not seeing the value in talent mobility or managers not wanting to let go of their top performers
- Logistical problems arising from the desire to relocate employees and the knock-on effects of doing so
- Ensuring equal opportunities at various levels and for employees from different functions
- Addressing potential bias and fairness in talent mobility decisions
Frameworks and tools can help address these problems. Leaders can be persuaded by the long-term ROI and assurances around monitoring and proving that ROI. Logistical problems are tricky but are solvable with careful planning and consideration of the variables so no gaps are left due to a move. Psychometric assessments and 360-degree feedback assessments can provide qualitative and quantitative data on employees to mitigate any worries about bias, fairness, or fit.
Why Choose Thomas International for Talent Mobility?
At Thomas International, we are experts in talent assessment and workforce optimization and we can help you get talent mobility right.
Using decades of psychological insight, we’ve developed a suite of assessments and tools that support the development and execution of talent mobility programs by providing data-rich insight into employee behavior, skills, and aptitude. We can help you analyze this data and transform it into an action plan, ensuring you can get the most out of your employees and identify those who will perform well in a talent mobility scheme.
We’re here to support your long-term success and will take the time to understand what makes your organization and your employees unique.
Unlocking Success with Talent Mobility
Talent mobility requires extensive planning and careful resource management, but all of that is worthwhile as you end up with resilient employees who are engaged with our organization and can see their place in it for the long term. You can use this approach to support the development of future leaders, to save on recruitment costs, and to create a flexible, agile workforce who are ready for a changing business environment.
Want to get started with creating a talent mobility strategy that works for your organization? Get in touch with our experts today and we’ll help you create a strategy that aligns with your business goals.
FAQs About Talent Mobility
What is the most effective form of talent mobility?
Different forms of talent mobility are effective for different purposes but, broadly speaking, cross-functional talent mobility is the most effective means of building a capable, resilient workforce that collaborates well.
How do you assess which employees are ready for internal mobility?
You can turn to psychometric tools such as behavioral assessments and aptitude tests to understand whether someone is ready to move internally. 360-degree feedback gathered from colleagues and managers is a useful indication too and, of course, you should always consider the desires of the employees themselves.
What are the benefits of global talent mobility?
Global talent mobility spreads knowledge across growing companies as they enter new territories and markets. It also helps maintain consistency of processes and company culture.
How can technology enhance talent mobility initiatives?
Technology - that is, specific tools such as psychometric assessments and coaching aids - enhances talent mobility initiatives by creating confidence in mobility decisions and supporting the transition process. These tools can also be used to track and monitor progress, supplying data-driven insights that show ROI.
