Develop Talent by Optimizing Mobility Programs

Mobility programs are not often seen as central to an upskilling and engagement strategy, but they should be. Learning and talent professionals often advocate for on-the-job experiences citing the 70-20-10 rule (where 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experiences.) One of the best ways to increase on-the-job experiences is to amplify your mobility program. Moving employees onto projects, other teams, and departments, cross-trains talent, expands capabilities, and increases engagement. Mobility programs can deliver better upskilling than LMS courses and the variety of experience can increase engagement.

This is especially important as the skills landscape is evolving fast and organizations that continually upskill are likely to thrive and outpace their peers in the coming years. In this article, I'll share a basic approach to optimizing mobility programs.

Keys to optimize your mobility program:

1. Gain Executive Support

• Explain the employee benefits and business benefits

• Describe the basic processes

• Define how results will be measured

• Ask for their explicit promotion (not passive support) for their team members to move into new roles and gigs with appropriate notice

2. Define transfer processes

• Simplify policies and processes for applying to internal openings and gigs

• Set expectations for notifying current managers and for managers to support and not hinder their team's mobility interests

• Consider eliminating manager approvals unless the transfer is proposed to start with less than 30 days notice.  Managers should become accustomed to seeing their best employees move to new roles with fair notice.

• Engage the taxation and legal teams to help identify any additional approvals or processes that may be required if employees change jurisdictions.

3. Increase visibility of opportunities

• Promote an easily accessible database of all open roles and gigs

• Allow employees to sign up for alerts on openings that match their interests

• Host interdepartmental forums and events to increase exposure to different projects, career lattices, and the overall mobility program.

Workday’s Talent Marketplace and Oracle’s Opportunity Marketplace are two easy to deploy tools that support this capability.  There are several other excellent solutions available as well including Gloat, Beamery, and Eightfold.

4. Integrate Talent Acquisition (TA) and Mobility Teams

• Synergize the work of TA and Mobility

• Set a standard that TA will first seek internal candidates for all non-entry level roles

• Have TA learn mobility policies and rules

• Give mobility an inside track to TA data and processes

5. Provide mobility counseling

• Train mentors as advocates for mobility

• Have all employees opt-in by default (not, 'are you interested in internal opportunities?', but 'do you want to opt-out of internal gigs and new career opportunities?')

• Provide sample use cases, skill and development opportunities

• Promote structured rotations and role swapping across departments.

6. Train hiring managers

• Educate managers on the value of internal mobility

• Coach managers on supporting team members exploring internal transfers

• Set guidelines for interviewing and selection processes

By dedicating resources and planning to internal movement, HR can facilitate critical skill development and increased engagement. A talent-first mobility program where employees feel empowered to chart their own growth, and managers advocate for mobility will support retention and motivation. The payoff will be a more agile workforce ready for the organization's future needs.