Internal Mobility: 4 Effective Ways To Support it With Upskilling

With the surging attrition worldwide, providing internal mobility to employees has become the need of the hour. The cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s salary. That means losing a proficient employee with an annual salary of $80,000 can cost the organization as much as $160,000. 

Companies around the world are focusing on retaining their top talent by offering opportunities for employees to move vertically or horizontally within the organization.  For example, Infosys reimagined career mobility to help employees shift their careers onto new tracks. This increased the number of promotions for the workforce and helped to control high attrition levels   

The Importance Of Internal Mobility 

Facilitating a positive culture of internal mobility by adding more skills to employee repertoire can help companies unlock agility and innovation without hiring new employees. This cost-effective approach can help save time, money, and resources. 

Research by CNBC found that 94% of workers said they’d stay at a company longer if their employers invested in their careers. This proves that providing growth opportunities through internal mobility can not only help elevate employee careers, but can boost retention. 

Employees feel valued when a company shows interest in their growth. They become more meticulous about achieving the company’s objectives, put in more effort to deliver the best outcomes and stay much longer in a company.

Why does Internal Mobility Matter?

Internal mobility benefits both employees and organizations by enhancing talent acquisition and fostering a culture of continuous learning and development (L&D). The need for internal mobility is crucial as it helps organizations create a more agile workforce and reduce voluntary turnover.

Why internal mobility is essential becomes evident in the wake of situations such as the Great Resignation, where businesses face challenges from sudden employee departures. Implementing a robust internal mobility program addresses this by building resilience and enabling quick role transitions. This approach not only helps retain valuable talent but also ensures that organizations can adapt swiftly to unforeseen circumstances. Investing in internal career opportunities supports employee growth and prepares businesses to respond effectively to future disruptions.

Examples of Internal Mobility at the Workplace

Internal mobility examples are

• Consider the example of an HR Generalist at a large tech company who, despite enjoying their role, discovered a greater passion for employee training and development. Through the organization's internal mobility program, they identified a Talent Development Specialist position in another department, applied, and successfully transitioned into the role.

• This internal move brought several benefits to the company. The employee's specialized focus on talent development boosted their job satisfaction and deepened their long-term commitment to the organization. At the same time, the talent development team gained an individual with comprehensive HR experience, enabling them to better align training initiatives with broader HR strategies.

• The shift also opened up the HR Generalist’s previous position, providing a growth opportunity for a junior team member to advance internally. By promoting from within, the company saved on recruitment and onboarding costs, as the transitioning employee already understood the company's systems, culture, and values. 

Benefits of Internal Mobility in Corporate

Here are the key benefits of internal mobility

Employee Retention

An internal mobility program signals to employees that they aren’t confined to their current roles and can move into new positions or departments. This reassures them that their diverse skills can be utilized, increasing employee retention and ensuring a motivated, productive workforce.

Lower Hiring Costs

External hiring is often costly and time-consuming, involving recruitment, interviews, and onboarding processes. Internal mobility helps reduce these expenses by promoting current employees who already understand the company’s culture and systems, requiring only minimal onboarding and faster time-to-productivity.

Enhanced Engagement

Offering employees continuous learning and the chance to apply new skills keeps them engaged. Engaged employees tend to perform better and show lower absenteeism, directly impacting the company's overall success.

Building a Resilient Workforce

Prioritizing employee development through internal mobility creates a workforce ready to adapt and take on new roles as needed. This resilience helps maintain productivity and competitiveness, even during challenging times.

How Upskilling Supports Internal Mobility

The Role of Upskilling in Internal Mobility

Upskilling empowers employees to advance within the organization by acquiring new competencies, and aligning their growth with available opportunities. This facilitates smoother transitions into new roles and helps retain top talent.

Bridging Skill Gaps with Upskilling

By providing targeted training, companies can address specific skill deficiencies, ensuring employees are equipped to fill internal vacancies effectively. This reduces reliance on external hiring and enhances role suitability.

Cost-Effective Workforce Development

Investing in upskilling internal staff is more economical than external recruitment, which involves higher costs for attracting, interviewing, and onboarding new employees. Upskilling also shortens the time to productivity.

Boosting Employee Engagement and Retention

Offering upskilling opportunities keeps employees motivated and engaged by showing them that their growth is valued. This can lead to increased job satisfaction and lower turnover rates.

Fostering a Culture of Continuous Learning

A focus on upskilling promotes an ongoing learning environment, encouraging employees to continually enhance their abilities. This culture supports both individual and organizational growth.

Building an Adaptable and Future-Ready Workforce

Upskilled employees are better prepared to handle changes and new challenges, ensuring the organization remains agile and competitive. This adaptability helps sustain long-term success and resilience.

How AI helps in bridging upskilling and internal mobility

Here’s how AI helps

Personalized Learning Paths

AI assesses employee skills and career goals to design personalized learning paths, ensuring training is relevant to their current roles and future career prospects, and aligning upskilling with internal mobility.

Skill Gap Analysis

AI tools can assess the skills required for different roles within the organization and identify existing gaps. This enables targeted upskilling programs that prepare employees for specific positions, improving their chances of internal mobility.

Career Pathing

AI-driven platforms provide insights into potential career paths within the organization, helping employees understand how their current skills can be leveraged for different roles. This guidance supports career planning and facilitates internal transitions.

Training Effectiveness Monitoring

AI evaluates the effectiveness of training programs by tracking employee progress and performance improvements. This feedback helps refine upskilling initiatives to ensure they meet the needs of both employees and the organization.

Talent Matching and Recommendations

AI algorithms match employees with suitable internal job openings based on their skills, interests, and career goals. This streamlines the internal mobility process by connecting employees with opportunities that align with their upskilling efforts.

Predictive Analytics

AI forecasts future skilling needs and trends, enabling organizations to prepare employees for upcoming roles and support internal mobility.

Enhanced Employee Engagement

AI-driven learning platforms offer interactive and engaging training experiences, boosting employee motivation and participation. Increased engagement in upskilling programs directly supports successful internal mobility.

4 Ways To Support Internal Mobility With Upskilling

Upskilling and internal mobility go hand in hand. With a skill-focused upskilling approach, you can tap into talent within your company, providing opportunities for employees to develop proactively to manage new responsibilities efficiently. Don’t have an upskilling strategy in place? Here are four ways leveraging upskilling will support your internal mobility initiative.

1) Create a skill inventory for each role

A skill inventory is a comprehensive database that provides a point-in-time view of skills for every role within the organization. It helps a company build a solid internal mobility strategy by determining which skills are needed now and in the future. 

To create a skill inventory, create a centralized repository of skills based on industry standards and trends, and map it to every role. This will help create a career ladder for vertical growth or an internal mobility framework for a lateral move within the organization. Moreover, a  broad overview of skills will help employees decide which path they want to take for career advancement.

2) Measure employee capabilities 

With the help of the skill inventory, evaluate the employee’s current skill level to determine the right role for the employee. It is crucial to ensure the employees have the competencies for the role. So, conduct objective and subjective assessments to identify skill gaps and determine if the employees can take on the new responsibilities.

3) Create department-focused skilling journeys

Once you identify the capabilities of each employee,  you need to create a career progression roadmap for each department. Set goals for each team, and give them clear direction on what they need to do to achieve them. It’s also important to determine how employees can continue gaining internal mobility within each department as they take on new responsibilities. 

4) Foster a continuous learning culture 

Provide on-the-job training to empower employees to practice continuous upskilling, ensuring they have opportunities to earn a promotion or switch to a different role as they develop. Constantly measure the effectiveness of your learning and development programs and take regular real-time actions to enhance them. 

Don’t forget to monitor employees’ performance and give timely feedback to ensure they are on the right track. Also, be sure to share success stories of how upskilling helped other employees achieve internal mobility. These are very effective ways to keep your employees engaged in career development.

Upskilling Technology to Enhance Your Internal Mobility Strategy

With the right technology, you can easily drive a skill-driven culture to make career advancement seamless. Upskilling technology, like the Disprz Learning Experience Platform(LXP), can support internal mobility and ease the process of creating skilling pathways. This solution complements your internal mobility strategy to bring the best out of your existing workforce and assess employees at the most granular level. 

Upskilling technology enables you to:

• Identify mobility trends within the organization

• Garner insights on horizontal and vertical career paths tailored to the employee’s current role

• Conduct role-based skilling for different departments 

• Map skills to opportunities 

• Create interactive learning and development programs with varied modules 

• Evaluate current capabilities and skill gaps through a wide array of assessments 

• Provide visibility into upskilling needs for different roles 

• Build personalized skilling pathways

• Automate recommendations for continuous skill development 

• Slice and dice learning insights to monitor learning behaviors and skilling progress

See a preview to explore how the Disprz LXP platform can support your internal mobility strategy and help nurture a continuous culture of learning and development.