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Internal Mobility Keeps Employees from

Moving On
Workspan Magazine
July 27, 2023

By Michael J. O'Brien

Employee Experience Organizational Performance Workforce Engagement

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Employee retention is increasingly tied to your ability to offer internal

opportunities for development, advancement and growth.
Fishawack Health faced a significant challenge with its employees: Those with two-to-four years of tenure
showed “a big drop-off in overall engagement,” according to Nick Holmes, global head of career
experience.

The cause? Combing through the company’s robust exit-interview data, Holmes discovered that people
weren’t leaving in search of a bigger paycheck. They were leaving because of a perceived lack of new
roles, experiences and opportunities — ones they couldn’t find at the UK-based health, medical and
biopharma consulting company.

Scant internal mobility — opportunities to advance across roles or change occupations within the same
organization — can spur unwanted turnover. This challenge isn’t unique to Fishawack Health: In fact, it is so
pervasive it ranks as the top trend listed in Korn Ferry’s Talent Acquisition Trends 2023 report.

“How do we fix the No. 1 thing that people are telling us they leave for?” Holmes asked. “There has to be a
new approach to help move people around the business.”

Professionals like Holmes are finding success tackling this challenge, and their experiences are invaluable
for others. To unlock the power of internal mobility, making inside opportunities available and obtainable is
quickly becoming a high-stakes talent strategy that benefits the entire organization.

The Value of Internal Mobility

Employers saw the heavy costs of attrition during the Great Resignation, when many companies “saw their
existing employees leave — and it took months to backfill,” said Jacob Zabkowicz, Korn Ferry’s vice
president and general manager, RPO, Global.
Today, organizations put greater emphasis on internal mobility and consider it a key part of their overall
talent strategy, he said. Where employers traditionally filled only 10% to 20% of open roles with internal
candidates, today they are looking at an approach “where more than 40% of open roles will be filled
internally,” Zabkowicz said.

This focus on mobility and retention enables organizations to enhance their value proposition to
employees and shareholders alike, he said.

The power to retain employees by offering internal mobility is borne out by research from Alan Benson,
associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, and Ben A. Rissing,
associate professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. When the pair
examined performance (internal and external) and turnover among a retailer’s 109,063 commissioned
salespeople and their 12,931 managers, they found that high performers and internal hires are less likely to
quit.

Importantly, employees who are both high-performing and internal hires are especially unlikely to quit.

“Organizations may be underestimating the importance of internal advancement as a means of retaining

of high performers,” determined Benson and Rissing in their 2020 paper, “Strength from Within: Internal
Mobility and the Retention of High Performers.”

"Careers in 2023 are like rock-climbing walls, and we’ve got to offer people
different rocks to be able to jump to."
Building New Pathways for Development
Recognizing the importance of internal mobility, how do organizations create a philosophy that enables
freedom of movement?

One clear development is that internal mobility strategies should no longer see advancement as a rigid,
straight path. Instead, they should focus on upskilling and transferring skills to new positions or
departments that can benefit from relatable expertise and experience. Whether it’s stretch assignments,
mentorships, shared roles or cross-functional opportunities, more organizations are building deeper ways
to optimize career progressions — ones that may not be linear.

At Fishawack Health, the process moved away from a ladder-like concept to one with more — and more
varied — pathways. “Careers in 2023 are like rock-climbing walls, and we’ve got to offer people different
rocks to be able to jump to,” Holmes said. “That’s our premise.”

New development opportunities can take multiple forms — whether that’s new skillset training and
learning programs, new assignments to short-term projects or offering new travel and global
development opportunities. (See the sidebar “Nonlinear Internal Mobility: Moving Around, Not Up or
Sideways” on page 36.)

With more than 700 job titles, Holmes said Fishawack Health has created a wide variety of available “rocks”
across the entire organization. “We should be able to offer people really cool, exciting career pivots,” he
said. “And we know that if we can offer people new opportunities inside the organization, then they’ll take
those opportunities versus them having to feel like they have to go outside our business to grow.”
That translates into better results for individual employees and the organization as a whole.

“When we’re able to improve employee engagement, we see a big lift in retention, which translates to
operational performance,” Holmes said. “And we know firsthand that improving the employee experience
has a direct correlation with improving the customer experience.”

Clear Communications, Expectations and Feedback

Holmes recommends the following three actions to unlock internal mobility as an organizational
superpower:

First, publish all open jobs and vacancies internally for one or two weeks before you push them
externally. “Make them really visible to all employees so they clearly see what opportunities are
available to them internally,” he said.
Second, start building a career architecture. Organizations should make sure they perfect and
maintain all job titles with accurate job descriptions and responsibilities. Then, map them to a certain
career level or stage, from one to eight, for example. “If you imagine one is your entry level, like an
intern, and eight is your CEO, start mapping jobs and then design the skills needed for each of those
jobs,” he said. “That helps people see what’s required of them now in their roles and also to move
forward.”
Last, have more frequent career conversations with employees. “If you’re on an annual or even a
biannual performance review, conversation or appraisal cycle, you’re too late,” Holmes said.
“Employees want things now, and organizations need to be a little bit more agile and faster by having
more robust career conversations with team members.”
To that end, organizations should upskill managers to have more frequent check-ins with employees to
discuss career goals openly and honestly.

What’s more, managers should be reminded not to hoard talent, said Holmes. “Your job isn’t to keep your
own teams close to your chest,” he said. “When you have the privilege of being a manager, your job is to
return the employee back into the organization with interest.”

Pricing Skills Versus Roles

To improve internal mobility programs, organizations need to bring compensation professionals into the
mix, according to Teuila Hanson, chief people officer at LinkedIn. (Hanson noted that LinkedIn’s 2023
Workplace Learning Report found that at the two-year mark, employees who made an internal move have
a 75% likelihood of staying with their company.)

By pricing skills — rather than roles — and tracking which skills are becoming most valuable over time,
organizations will be better positioned to make employees feel they are being paid what they would
receive on the open market.

“More and more companies are doubling down on skills,” she said. “They understand where the hockey
puck is moving with the salary surveys, and they’re trying to get there before anybody else.”

The total rewards professional’s role in all of this? “It may be time to review your compensation strategy to
help support internal mobility objectives,” suggested Marta Turba, CCP, CSCP, CBP, vice president of
content strategy at WorldatWork. “Assess if your rewards programs are set up to motivate skill-building
and internal mobility and reward it fairly. This may require a new approach to defining role requirements,
constructing more flexible career paths, rethinking traditional compensable factors, and ensuring that skill
pricing is part of your competitive strategy.”

2 in 3 employees now embrace internal mobility over external job searches

Source: Global Trends Report 2023, HireVue.

Moving Toward the Future

In terms of future initiatives, Fishawack Health will soon introduce a new mentoring program to help
improve mobility across the business. “Where there are knowledge and experts and people who have
been doing what they’re doing for a long time, we aim to connect them with people who are maybe green
in their careers to help them through that journey,” Holmes said.

The company also plans to harness AI as an evolving tool to help employees plot their career journeys and
pathways. “From Day One, you will be able to see the next four years of your career, or you could pivot at
any moment and see the job of your dreams and what it will take to get there,” Holmes said.

In many cases, companies will use such talent analytics and workforce planning to determine which new
roles are needed to futureproof the business and which employees might be a good fit for those roles, the
Korn Ferry report noted.

Reasons for Staying Together Today

In the present day, current economic turbulence may be creating stronger incentives for both
organizations and employees to remain together.

According to HireVue’s Global Trends Report 2023, 63% of 1,000 U.S. candidates agree that the current
economic landscape has impacted their job search, and two out of three don’t plan to leave their current
job in the near future.

However, that doesn’t mean employees aren’t open to new roles within the same organization. In fact, 66%
of those surveyed are willing to transition to different job roles with the same employer.

The data also uncovered a growing alignment between candidate desires and employer priorities on the
strategy of internal mobility: Nearly 50% of 3,831 talent leaders polled now emphasize internal mobility for
current employees.

“Many job seekers are pausing searches to stay longer-term in careers at companies that will help them
upskill, re-skill and grow,” said Anthony Reynolds, CEO at HireVue. “Equally, employers are willing to fill new
roles by retaining and investing in their current team members.”

For Fishawack Health’s Holmes, the business case for increased internal mobility is a simple one: “If
organizations aren’t focused on how to provide their employees with new experiences,” he said, “they will
lose people quickly.”
Nonlinear Internal Mobility: Moving Around, Not Up or Sideways
Through a wider variety of internal mobility moves, employees can gain deeper knowledge of an
organization’s business operations and identify areas for innovation and improvement. A nonlinear
approach can also lead to a more adaptable workforce that’s better equipped to successfully
respond to industry change.

At Fishawack Health, Teresa — a member of the Integration team — worked originally as a U.S.-based,
client-facing project manager in global marketing. Over time, she took on several internal and cross-
functional opportunities to progress her career. Last year, she took a six-month assignment in the UK
to deepen her project management experience and build professional relationships around the
world.

After that assignment, she pivoted to a trans-Atlantic team focused on internal process improvement
initiatives.

She believes the moves gave her a wider scope of possibilities for advancement and upskilling,
helping her grow within her role and expand her expertise.

Teresa said that internal opportunities like the ones she participated in “are an investment in
employees and in turn inspire us to be invested back in the organization.” She added that “providing
and encouraging cross-functional opportunities promotes curiosity, mitigates burnout, and can bring
a renewed purpose to charging up an individual’s career.”

Comment on Engage
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About the Author

Michael J. O'Brien
Freelance Contributor at
WorldatWork

Michael J. O'Brien is a freelance writer for

WorldatWork who has been covering the world of
business since 2005.

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