Internal Mobility Metrics, Strategy & Best Practices – A Complete Guide

Internal mobility is one of the most crucial things when it comes to the utilization of talent. There are a lot of benefits of using internal mobility, including an increase in workplace engagement and flexibility when an organization is going through a rough patch.

While bringing in outside talent is an important element of growing a company, many companies ignore their own most potential employees. At this point, the best outcome can be that the companies may not notice the hidden potential. However, more serious consequences can be the failure to maximize the available employees' potential, discouragement of employees, and make employees seek work somewhere else.

Internal Mobility Metrics

You can use internal mobility metrics to know how employees move within a company. It can also be useful to analyze how you can move employees across departments and how they can take on bigger roles. Just remember that there can be several roadblocks when employees are climbing up the ladder. So, it is possible for employees to be stranded and not progress further. You can analyze whether your employees or changes are helping in preparing people for career growth. It can also give you an idea about where turnover is low and areas you need to improve.

You can track:

• Number of employees promoted
• Number of employees demoted
• Promotion dates
• Employees moved horizontally
• Employees moved across the departments

From this date, you can calculate the accurate time to promote, average promotion rate, and percentage of employees transferred to other departments.

Internal Talent Mobility Strategy

 All of your employees will look for new possibilities both inside and outside the company at some point. Internal migration can be quite beneficial to most firms. Allowing your employees to move into different jobs or areas of the company brings new ideas and viewpoints to the table.

However, not all of them have the infrastructure in place to make this possible. Workers look externally when they can't simply move laterally or upwardly. Recruiting in-demand skills and personnel results in lower retention rates, higher prices, and longer lead times for enterprises.

Reduce the cost of replacements

Some studies show that replacing an employee might cost up to 150 percent of their pay. Especially with individuals who have competitive levels of expertise and knowledge or for high-demand professions.

So, an improvement in employee retention should be a focus all year. However, you should focus on it more when you suspect that your employees are looking for other jobs. It is likely that the workers may seek new chances after obtaining a new qualification or returning from a vacation. If none are available internally, attrition will likely increase as employees reflect on their careers and hunt for new opportunities. So, an improvement in internal mobility is one method to reduce turnover during these tricky situations.

Use internal mobility to retain employees

 Internal mobility can help you to retain key individuals. In addition, it can also prove to be useful in developing skills. As a result, it can encourage loyalty by establishing a successful infrastructure. They are prevented from going to another company when you offer them new challenges to overcome within the organization. This is especially important now, as we witness new changes in the industry. Now, the industry is moved by several technical developments and the use of artificial intelligence. There are also some difficulties like market instability, political unpredictability, and work-from-home jobs.

A skill inventory is another important component of successful mobility infrastructure. If companies don't collect and document their employees' skills, they won't be able to aid them with their next job, at least not as effectively. It is important to know the gaps and strengths so that the leaders can make calculated decisions.

Use promotions to your advantage

Internal mobility can be improved structurally, but that does not imply that all employees should be promoted. Lateral job changes can be just as difficult and useful as promotions. Workers might be transferred to other departments and assigned to different projects. This strategy works particularly effectively with employees who are interested in other aspects of the business. A project manager with marketing experience, for example, who is seeking a new job.

Focus on building a flexible workforce ​ 

You can offer opportunities to employees that allow them to improve their abilities. As a result, they can advance their careers by seeking out new job opportunities within the organization. When you combine the pieces of training with internal mobility objectives, you will get an amazingly productive and flexible workforce.

Talent Mobility Best Practices ​ 

Getting workers from an external source has long been a crucial source of talent when organizations need employees for vacant positions. However, the concept of internal recruiting has become a game-changer. Thus, it has recently gained popularity. It is primarily because of personnel scarcity and continuously varying organizational demands. Talent mobility best practices can help you do it efficiently:

Get support from leaders ​ 

The importance of internal mobility cannot be ignored, and this is the reason why hiring managers and leaderships are concerned about it. Internal mobility can be a much-needed change in any organization that can lead it to success. Consequently, you should take this as an opportunity to advocate for internal mobility and get support from leaders for training programs and job replacements within the organization.

Work on internal mobility ​ 

When you advertise the internal openings and career prospects, some text on the organization's notice board will not do the job. So, you should always work on making an internal mobility program. Intranet programs like AgilityPortal are common budget-friendly alternatives to building an internal mobility program.

Change your organization's recruitment process ​ 

Your traditional recruitment processes may run smoothly, but can you tackle duties like best practices for talent mobility? To tackle new difficulties, most recruitment teams adapt their traditional approaches. You can hire an internal recruitment manager who will work just for you. He can help you find and recruit talent within your organization, and in return, it can aid your hiring team.

Prioritize the experience ​

Experience should not be ignored even in internal mobility programs. It's critical to give accurate, fast, and thorough feedback, just as it is with external recruits. You should always do it, especially when an applicant doesn't receive the position. Explain the reason for the refusal and the skills and abilities that a candidate must acquire to be able to take on the new position.

Internal Mobility KPI ​ 

  The experts and leadership need to collect the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) if they want to assess the success of their internal mobility programs. It can greatly influence internal mobility. The experts will not be able to tell the difference between success and an unsuccessful internal mobility program without the right KPI.

Percent of individuals replaced internally ​ 

If your company only has room for one KPI, this should be your top priority. This figure represents the overall effectiveness of your internal mobility programs. If the number of individuals replaced internally is great, then it will show that you are going in the right direction. However, it is true that one parameter cannot decide the internal mobility program's success. Likewise, you need more internal mobility metrics to adopt best practices.

Metrics related to managers ​ 

Employees must feel comfortable discussing their career ambitions with their superiors in order for internal mobility to be successful at a company. Managers aren't always natural career coaches, unfortunately. Every organization will evaluate this differently, but looking at a manager's history is one approach to assess their capacity to facilitate internal mobility.

Check the nature of mobility ​ 

Getting promoted used to be the only way to change your title or progress up the corporate ladder. However, as organizational structures have flattened, lateral movements have become more common. It is recommended to divide internal mobility into promotions, job function change, and change of business unit.

Benefits of Talent Mobility ​ 

Internal talent mobility has yet to gain significant popularity because firms must first overcome common cultural barriers before fully embracing the notion. Top impediments include a lack of employee awareness of viable inside opportunities and a reluctance to pursue internal responsibilities. Furthermore, hiring managers and HR leaders may not have a thorough understanding of employees' whole skill sets. In addition, most of the managers are unwilling to hire or share internal talent.

Here are the top benefits of the internal talent mobility program:

• -Decrease costs from onboarding and recruitment process
• -Helps to establish brand image and prevent layoffs
• -Increase the engagement and retention of employees
• -Provide opportunities to employees to learn new skills
• -Make your organization's workforce flexible
• -Promote the culture of internal mobility

Conclusion

It is clear that internal mobility programs are needed by the organization if they aim to be successful. It can work as a company's hidden weapon for employee retention. However, you need to use the internal mobility metrics to ensure the program's success. And for that purpose, you need to follow the best practices as outlined in this article.