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Skills-based workforce planning for internal mobility
An organization’s hiring strategy is arguably the most important tool for keeping its operations running smoothly. But the focus shouldn’t solely be on recruiting new talent. L&D teams should also strengthen their organizational skills inventory by equipping existing employees with new capabilities to enable internal mobility.
Numerous studies have concluded that it is cheaper to upskill and reskill internal employees than to find new ones. That's not all. External hires usually receive higher pay but perform worse.
Replacing a mid-level employee, for example, can cost 20 percent of their annual salary. Meanwhile, replacing a high-level employee can cost up to 213 percent of their annual salary. This means a C-suite executive making $100,000 can cost up to $213,000 to replace.
Despite this, many employees say it’s easier to find new roles externally rather than internally. This is bad news at a time when employee attrition rates are surging. As organizations face digital skill gaps, talent teams should recognize and promote opportunities for internal mobility.
What is internal mobility?
Internal mobility is the movement of employees within an organization to different roles, departments, projects, or locations. Instead of hiring outside the company, internal mobility uses the talent already within the organization. It focuses on reskilling and upskilling current employees to fill positions and close skill gaps.
While there are different types of internal mobility, we're primarily concerned with skills-based mobility at SkyHive by Cornerstone. This focuses on developing employees' skills and competencies to enable them to take on more diverse responsibilities across roles.
Why is internal mobility important?
Providing opportunities for career advancement and growth within a skills-based organization can significantly enhance employee retention rates. This is because employees tend to be happier and more loyal when they see a clear path for growth and development.
But why does this matter?
It all comes down to the rapid pace of digital change. This is continuing to accelerate and transform the world of work as we know it.
By 2030, more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled because there aren’t enough skilled workers to take them. This has employers worried. Fifty five percent say that a lack of key skills hinders innovation, and estimates say that 50 percent of jobs will require new skills by 2027.
The good news is that talent teams can champion internal mobility by equipping employees with the skills they need for the future. This helps to foster an agile workforce that's prepared to bridge skills gaps and address digital transformation challenges.
Promoting skills-based internal mobility
Human resources (HR) and learning and development (L&D) teams often look externally when skills gaps arise. What many fail to realize is that upskilling and reskilling go hand in hand with internal mobility. Finding the right talent and skill sets can be difficult when the underlying challenge is digital transformation.
With this in mind, talent teams should stop searching for the right skill sets and instead prioritize skills-based internal mobility. This offers two advantages: It naturally encourages mobility while also ensuring that everyone has the skills needed to keep things moving.
Here are four actionable steps you can take to begin encouraging skills-based internal mobility.
1. Know your workforce’s skills and capabilities
To successfully promote skills-based internal mobility, you need to determine the skills and competencies your workforce possesses. You can’t act on information you don’t have. Most talent teams will utilize a range of assessment methods to do this, such as:
- Direct skills assessments that assess technical skills and knowledge.
- Performance reviews that evaluate job-specific competencies and achievements.
- Gathering feedback from peers, managers, and subordinates.
- Enabling employees to assess their skills based on predefined criteria.
- Conducting one-on-one discussions to assess skills, experiences, and aspirations.
2. Create a skills inventory
A skills inventory is a catalog of the skills and competencies of employees within an organization. It’s a valuable resource that shows talent teams what skills exist within the organization. This enables them to assess what’s available and plan for the future. It also helps talent teams conduct succession planning, and plan training and development initiatives.
Building a skills inventory begins with identifying the skills that your organization needs. You'll also need to know who within the organization has them. Map these skills to the various roles and functions that exist within. This creates a solid foundation for developing internal mobility.
3. Implement AI within your tech stack
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been a game-changer for skills intelligence. The right solution has the potential to streamline long-term planning while simultaneously improving the visibility of career development opportunities. It also helps to eliminate many of the unconscious human biases that unfairly impact selection.
Implementing a tool like SkyHive into your tech stack can help you efficiently match talent and skills demand to available supply by integrating organizational, employee, and external data. Our AI does all the heavy lifting for you by analyzing skills gaps and creating reskilling pathways for employees.
4. Make skills development part of your culture
Organizations that wish to enable skills-based mobility must make skills development a core part of their culture. On-the-job training, workshops, mentoring, and upskilling opportunities can help develop this culture and remove any barriers to internal movement.
Skills development simplifies the process of skill discovery and career pathway planning. Employees can see where they fit in any role across the organization and see a clear pathway to get there. Paired with targeted training, this can help employees acquire the skills they need for the future.
This transforms how employees perceive and understand career progression within the agile organization, allowing for more internal mobility and increased employee engagement and retention.
Internal mobility should be your goal
Digital transformation is displacing occupations and creating new opportunities in equal measure. The biggest challenge for talent teams is equipping their workforce with the skills required to meet their demands and challenges.
Instead of looking outside the organization, HR and talent teams should look to identify employees who can be reskilled internally. This will not only bridge skills gaps and save costs but also empower people to fulfill their career goals. The result? Employees feel fulfilled and stick around in the long term.
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