During the most challenging times, great leadership with a disciplined mindset can achieve greater speed, quality, and cost control. But even some of the most progressive organizations, who are leading with decisive crisis management and scenario planning, are realizing that if there are significant gaps in their talent mobility programs they will be challenged to respond to market conditions and pose a significant risk to the success of their business. HR and leadership teams need to cultivate a growth mindset and foster a culture of cross-department talent sharing to build a workforce that can constantly evolve as macroeconomic shifts happen. Those organizations that recognize the revolutionary potential of engaging with every type of worker, and who can inspire a cultural shift in their organizations, will make a genuine transformation possible (1).
Even with the best intentions and a team that has the right mindset, a looming challenge for many organizations is the lack of an efficient or effective way of matching workers and their skills to short-term projects or talent development opportunities outside of their immediate team. PwC’s 2020 study found that rapidly reskilling and supporting workers to take on different responsibilities will be the difference between success and failure. Leaders must also understand the trade-offs and be able to answer important questions about their talent mobility strategy, for example — should we allow people to deepen their expertise in a particular specialization or to develop broader skill sets by moving workers across functions? Evidence shows that broadening skills allows people to progress to more meaningful and exciting work within an organization, promoting loyalty, retention, and engagement. Alvin Toffler, the American writer and futurist, said, “… the illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn (2).
Old vs. New Code for Workforce Architecture Design
Having a robust, rationalized workforce architecture is now critical for HR and talent systems. However, many organizations continue to operate according to industrial-age workforce architecture models that are more than 100 years old, which weigh down progress and inhibit true change from taking hold (3). For most of the post–World War II era, organizations had HR subject matter experts (SME) conduct a laborious manual job analysis to prepare a detailed job description based on the tasks the job required and the attributes a good candidate should have. This lengthy review and sign off process was followed by a job evaluation to determine how the job fit into the organizational chart and how much it should pay, especially compared with other jobs. Then HR and hiring managers would manually sift through applicants to prioritize candidates based on skills, personality, and IQ tests, extensive interviews to ensure they were matching the right person to a role (4). This labor-intensive process has been a key stumbling block for internal talent mobility.
Figure 1: Old Approach vs. New Approach to Workforce Architecture Design
The old workforce architecture design approaches were labor-intensive, but this wasn’t an issue decades back as organizational structures were reasonably stable and unchanging. Today, however organizations are dynamic and fast-moving, with many organizations applying micro changes to their structure continuously. HR is now in need of an organizational design approach that can keep pace with their agile organizations. The new way of tackling this complex problem is through a multifaceted design methodology, which utilizes internal and market data, automated AI-driven skills mapping, and industry benchmarked prebuilt skills taxonomies based on organizational psychologist career architecture design. By utilizing a talent blueprint methodology and an AI-enabled architectural infrastructure, organizations can leverage crowdsourced employee talent data and skills mapping that will remove the burdensome and time-consuming SME focus group processes and deliver an agile continuously updated internal talent marketplace.
Key Benefits of Internal Talent Mobility
Leveraging an inclusive talent marketplace allows organizations to apply important redeployment strategies to weather storms and upskilling and reskilling strategies to improve workforce capabilities. As a result, both the worker and the employer realize the value of transferable skills, not to mention those who take the time now to upskill, research, and execute a well-considered career strategy will benefit in the years to come.
Upskilling enhances the workforce experience, and that brings real benefits — a 2017 MIT study (5) showed that companies who provide a great employee experience are 25% more profitable than those that don’t. Upskilling provides easier access for all types of work-related career opportunities and develops learning programs to enhance people’s career potential while highlighting untapped capacity.
Key Metrics to Measure Internal Talent Mobility
In order to improve internal talent mobility, HR leaders need the right key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of their programs. Without the right KPIs, it will be challenging to assess whether or not their internal talent mobility efforts are having the desired impact on workforce engagement, career development, or retention.
When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of internal talent mobility efforts, keep in mind the following:
- Identify the types of opportunities, i.e. roles, projects, or assignments, to be measured.
- Determine the number of work-related opportunities that are taken on by an internal employee compared to externally sourced candidates as a whole and by department.
- Determine the level of career coaching delivered by managers.
A talent marketplace designed to improve internal mobility should deliver some, if not all, of the following key success metrics:
- Improve retention
- Increase efficiency
- Improve attrition
- Improve employer branding
- Reduced costs
- Increased organizational capability
In the final article in the series, Jason Averbook drills into some of the best practices you should be looking for when considering an internal talent marketplace solution.
1. Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce November 2020
2. Students should aspire for deepening, broadening their knowledge October 2020
3. The organization of the future: Arriving now February 2017
4. Your Approach to Hiring Is All Wrong June 2019
5. Building Business Value with Employee Experience June 2017
Future-Proof Your Talent Mobility Strategy #1
Best Practices for an Internal Talent Marketplace Solution #3
A Best Practice Guide to Internal Talent Mobility
Internal talent mobility is essential in this new era of work, and a talent marketplace solution is required to apply this talent operating model in a sustainable and scalable way. In this playbook, we explore why organizations need to invest in an internal talent marketplace.
About the Author
Jim Holincheck has more than 25 years of experience in the HCM technology industry and is the Vice President of Advisory Services at Leapgen. Before joining Leapgen, Jim gained experience as a vendor (Workday – Services Strategy and Product Management), an industry analyst (Gartner and Forrester/Giga), and a consultant (Accenture). He has spent his entire career working with customers to strategize, select, implement, support, and optimize their usage of enterprise applications. Helping customers successfully get the most out of their enterprise software investments is something he is very passionate about. Jim graduated from Washington University with a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in 1988.
