Let’s be honest, the talent market certainly isn’t like it used to be. From increasing job insecurity, talent attraction difficulties and ever reducing budgets, things are tough out there right now.

The secret to battling through it all is talent agility. What are we even talking about? Talent agility is the ability of your internal talent to be able to quickly respond to change, including skill set demands, situational or structural changes. The more agile your team, the stronger it is and the more likely your business won’t just survive, but thrive, through challenging times (both internally and externally).

So how do you improve your talent agility? By having a solid Internal Mobility program. Internal mobility is when your employees are able to move around (vertically and laterally) internally within your organisation. To enable this, your organisation should have an Internal Mobility program which helps to put in place processes that will enable and encourage this movement for your employees.

Ready to get more agile?

A is for agile

If you didn’t catch it before, we think having an agile workforce is a pretty vital part of keeping your company successful. It’s all about having free-flowing talent - allowing your employees to move into new roles as their priorities change or demands differ. This involves a successful combination of talent planning, talent mapping and internal mobility. If you can get it right, there’s some pretty sweet benefits you’ll get as a result, including:

• Rapid responsiveness - your business will be able to respond and handle changes to shifting strategies and resources more effectively and efficiently. With a business-wide view of all your skills and teams, you’ll spend less time trying to find the right talent to deploy and actually get to work solving the problem sooner.
• Increased innovation - when you have an effective internal mobility program up and running, your talent can easily share their skills, knowledge and networks with others. This can help foster new ideas and improve innovative problem solving.
• Strong retention - we all want to keep our best talent in the office with us, and an agile workforce with strong internal mobility can help do exactly that. Our 2023 Candidate Motivators Report found that 49% of respondents felt that a lack of purpose in their job motivated them to look elsewhere. By giving your people more opportunities for development internally, there’s no need for them to go searching in other places.

B is for benefits

The benefits of a more agile workforce with a strong Internal Mobility strategy just keep on coming. For all our employers, you can expect to see:

• A stronger pool of internal and proven talent to help fill more advanced roles as they arise.
• Reduced costs for external recruitment - in this economy, who doesn’t love to save a bit of money.
• A great addition to your Employer Value Proposition which will appeal to more top talent and make talent acquisition much easier.

For all our employees, there’s plenty of good stuff in it for you to:

• More development opportunities - so you can try your hand at that IT career you’ve always dreamed about.
• Internal career growth - no more switching jobs every time you want to take that next step.
• Greater engagement with your company as whole - no more being siloed to your immediate team.
• Exposure to projects and possibilities outside of your regular job description - helps keep the day-to-day interesting.

C is for … Come on, let’s get started!

Now that we’ve convinced you this whole Internal Mobility program is a good idea, how do you get started on developing it?

First, you need to get the big guns on board and buying-in to this strategy. The best way to do this is to build a business case (with plenty of stats) that showcases all the amazing ROI benefits, such as increased employee retention, which means reduced recruitment costs, and increased hiring velocity when you do need to find some external talent. You’ll also want to include a clear outline of the overall purpose and strategy of the program, a map of all the current and future critical skill sets that your business needs (and will get with this program) and the development of a cross-functional team who will be responsible for delivering the program (we recommend having reps from your Talent Acquisition, L&D and Hiring Managers departments).

It is also a good idea to think about investing in a platform that can help your employees access opportunities within your company. Having a place where your recruiters can easily post about current roles and internal candidates can easily express interest, makes running such a program simple and smooth. This platform doesn’t just have to showcase new permanent positions, it could also include things like:

• job swaps
• mentoring opportunities
• temporary rotations
• job shadowing
• cross-team projects.

Let’s see it in action

This all sounds great on paper, but what does a successful program actually look like in reality? What will it actually involve you developing?

The big one is ensuring you have dedicated career pathways (tracks, if you will) that your employees can follow in order to upskill and land that new role. If people are trying to completely change up their career, they probably won’t have all the qualifications they need to make the move, you need to help them get there. Things like letting different teams be involved in company-wide projects as they progress, is a great first step.

You’ll also need to put in place some new people processes. Things will have to get a little more fluid in the office. If you’re going to let people jump across and help out various teams and try new things, what process will they need to follow to do that, while still keeping things afloat in their current role? How will you support them in making that leap?

Keep things competitive

Another positive flow-on effect that having a strong Internal Mobility program (and therefore agile workforce) can have for your company is increasing your competitiveness. Once things are up and running and the results are flowing in, you can take that data and use it to attract new talent.

Use this in your Employer Value Proposition and showcase your success loud and proud on your website - let candidates know about the good stuff going on in your company.

Your employees will also become your best advocates. They can share their stores on how they took control of their career and were empowered to explore new skills, strengths and interests. When people hear about how you value personal development, they’ll want to become a part of it.

Why not give it a go

There might be a little bit of initial work involved, but building an Internal Mobility program to help make your workforce more agile is absolutely worth it! The transformative effect it can have across your entire business is much greater than the little extra effort you’ll need to put in. Giving your employees the opportunity to feel enabled and empowered in their careers, to allow them to work with people and on projects they wouldn’t otherwise get the chance and making them feel inspired when they come to work everyday, will give you a loyal team of talent everyone will envy.