The last year in the workforce has been anything but predictable. The year started with a tsunami of headlines about 'The Great Resignation' and employees leaving their jobs in record numbers. However, the tides quickly turned and companies began laying employees off by the thousands. While both continue to happen, one thing remains clear: internal mobility is your best chance at sustaining your business and cutting costs.

We as employers have more power than we realize. Many of us feel that the biggest pain point we are currently having is sourcing the right candidates and finding the right fit for our open roles. Hiring new employees is stressful, and it can also be time-consuming and costly. But what if you're thinking about it all wrong? What if the problem is that you aren't recognizing the talent you already have at your company? That's where internal mobility comes in. Through talent mobility, you will repurpose valuable talent while avoiding some of the costs associated with letting employees go or having them leave.

In this Bryq blog, we put a spotlight on internal mobility, why it's important, and how you can implement internal mobilization strategies to help your company continue to thrive and have a competitive edge - even in times of economic downturn.

What is Internal Mobility?

Internal mobility involves using your current employees to fill open roles within your company. It also allows giving these employees opportunities to learn and grow in order to make them better at their jobs. Utilizing this strategy may include creating new positions, developing training and mentorship programs, and creating special projects. By taking advantage of internal mobility, the company gives employees a chance to hone their skills, climb the career ladder, and meet professional goals.

With the labor market being highly competitive and the costs of losing an employee reaching 75% of the annual salary, internal mobility is an integral part of a company's growth and productivity.

3 Reasons Why Internal Mobility Helps

The COVID pandemic has really taken its toll on the workforce since 2020, but not all of its impacts have been negative. If companies that survived the past two years have learned anything, it's how to be resilient. When negative events happened, you figured out how to survive and use the human capital you already have. You were practicing internal mobility without even realizing it! As we enter a time of economic uncertainty, we will have to continue to be resilient and strategize to keep our businesses operating successfully. Here are a few of the reasons why utilizing internal mobility is important in tough times.

1. It Cuts Costs

Hiring new employees always comes with additional costs. Hiring costs may include job advertisement, training, relocation expenses, and more. If you are hiring from within, many of these costs associated with new employees go away. If you're not using a multi-measure assessment tool to onboard talent, you might also be hiring the wrong people. A high turnover rate costs a company thousands of dollars. By offering existing employees opportunities for growth, you can reduce the turnover rate tremendously.

2. It Improves Employee Satisfaction

Keeping employees engaged and involved is the key to raising satisfaction levels. If your employees aren't happy, they're not going to stick around. It's clear that employees are leaving their jobs at a rapid pace. But do we know exactly why this is happening? While there are a multitude of reasons as to why workers are quitting their jobs, a lack of career development and growth seems to be at the top of the list. Over 77% of employees say that they feel like they're on their own to develop new skills. According to Bryq's 2021 EEOC survey research, employees are currently seeking new roles because they are longing for career growth and new opportunities. In short? This is a really big deal.

Filling open roles by hiring from within is one of the best things you can do to keep employees happy. This will also save you money and lower your attrition rates. If employees feel like there are opportunities for them to grow and advance up the company ladder, it will hinder them from leaving. You shouldn't focus too much on skills that can be taught to them. They likely already know how the company works and understand the company culture (if it's well-defined). The costs it will take to train and upskill them is far less than it would take to train a new employee who may not be a good fit for the role or company's culture. Internal mobility helps.

3. It Helps You Invest in the Company's Future

We already discussed the costs associated with onboarding new employees. By allowing your internal workforce to take advantage of the new opportunities, you are investing in the future of your company. As employees hone their skills within the company, loyalty also increases. Thus lowering the turnover rates.

Generally, homegrown senior staff perform better than external hires. By offering internal growth opportunities, you are increasing the appeal of your company. According to LinkedIn, 59% of employees join a company for better career path opportunities. If you offer them a chance to grow, these talents are likely to choose your business over competitors that don't invest in internal mobility.

Internal Mobility Strategy: Where to Start?

Once you are ready to implement the internal mobility approach for your company, you can take advantage of the following steps:

1. Increase Transparency

Let your employees know that you are looking into hiring from within. This will allow employees to express interest and show initiative towards wanting to fill the role. You might think that employees know about open roles, but this isn't the case. Over 69% of companies believe that their employees are aware of existing opportunities at their companies. Meanwhile, only 25% of employees said they knew about these options.

2. Create Profiles

To get a clear picture of the resources you have within the company, create profiles of your existing employees. During the process, you may discover the skills and potential you've overlooked. You also may see that certain underperforming employees are not great fits for their roles. This process can be simplified by using assessment tools that match a candidate’s cognitive skills and personality traits to specific roles.

3. Establish Training Programs

Create training programs that can encourage team leaders to help other members obtain new skills and experience for internal mobility opportunities. Mentorship programs are great ways to not only enhance the employee experience, but they also help team members bond. Additionally, it's a great idea to have employees shadow other employees for on-the-job training. If you have the funds, you may also want to invest in diploma or certification programs your employees can participate in.

4. Obtain an Objective Opinion

The human ego can also be a factor that prevents internal mobility from happening. For example, some managers practice talent hoarding. This means that they retain their best employees instead of giving them an opportunity to develop elsewhere within the company.

To avoid this problem, consider assessing your internal talent pool as part of their career development efforts. For example, assessments such as Bryq, enable the collection of objective data about your talent pool to help you make decisions about internal mobility options.

Improve Internal Mobility With Bryq

The Bryq Talent Intelligence platform is there to help employers in every step of the employee lifecycle. From hiring to retiring, Bryq offers companies insight that allows them to make better, faster, and more data-driven talent management decisions. While Bryq gives you insight into things such as remote work capabilities and cognitive ability of both your employees and candidates, it can also give you data into how well people fit a particular role based on their personality and cognitive skills.

If a job candidate doesn't score wonderfully for a marketing position, you might be able to see that they're actually a perfect fit for a sales role based on our data. You can use the same science used to hire new employees to see whether your existing employees are good fits for your roles, making internal mobility that much easier to use as an HCM strategy. Bryq's talent matching really helps you to fit the right employees into the right roles. With product features like the Bryq 9-box Model, predictive performance has never been easier.

Internal mobility is a highly underused yet efficient recruitment strategy. You are cutting costs and investing in the company's future by taking advantage of existing employees to fill vacancies and utilizing them in roles to complete special projects. By adopting this strategy, you can stay afloat, keep your talent, and gain a competitive edge against the competition.

To learn more about how Bryq can help improve internal mobility and help you compete with the best, schedule a demo with our Customer Success Team today!