From the Great Resignation to Great Ambition

Beamery is a Business Reporter client.

Hiring from within can boost retention and engagement rates—and help you efficiently build the workforce of the future.

Your business success relies on finding, keeping and developing the right people. Amid all the recent changes in business and the workforce—the Great Resignation, changing work/life priorities, a looming recession, the huge acceleration in digitalization—CEOs must prioritize the question of where the next generation of talent is coming from. And it could already be inside your company. 

The biggest competition for talent is no longer a handful of companies within your industry—it’s every company, everywhere. People can more easily work remotely, so the potential talent pool has widened, but the ambitions of the workforce need to be better understood and carefully harnessed. 

According to The Talent Trap, 88% of business leaders surveyed said that acquiring and retaining employees is more important to them now than it was 18 months ago. The latest PwC Pulse Survey found that “the ability to hire and retain talent” is the most critical growth driver for 77% of C-suite executives; this figure was higher among CFOs than CHROs. But in the absence of a smart approach to internal mobility, it’s not clear that talent really is a top priority for many businesses, or that they will be ready to find the workforce they need for a changing future. 

Hiring from within brings many benefits, directly and indirectly, for your business. 

Uncovering hidden gems and unlocking efficiencies

Until the 1970s, around 90% of organization roles were filled through promotions and lateral assignments. Today, just one-third are filled this way. 

Thinking of your existing employees as potential candidates gives you a much greater pool to fish in. You also gain more immediate detail on their skills and experience and—crucially—a much shorter time between identifying and hiring the right person for the job. 

Hiring internally saves money on training and development; one study found that staff who were hired externally take three more years to get to the same level of performance as internal hires. Existing employees already know the business, have demonstrable track records and can start adding value in a fraction of the time it takes to source, interview and onboard new candidates. 

How do you ensure that your top talent is uncovered and presented with opportunities to progress? New technologies allow you to use employee skills to match internal candidates with roles or projects and give employees a Talent Marketplace to find their own routes to development and success. 

With an AI-powered, skills-based approach, the hidden gems will come to light. And you’ll have quality candidates faster, with less of the unconscious bias that often hinders progress for certain groups. 

According to Gartner, the total number of skills required for a single job is increasing by 6% annually, which means that the skills you have today are not the same ones that will be needed tomorrow. To future-proof your organization, you should be looking to build those skills in your existing workforce. Smart businesses are upskilling and reskilling their existing employees and hiring from within to build the workforce of the future.

Stop the leak: retain your best people

According to the Beamery Talent Index, 53% of people are planning to leave their job in the next 12 months. But 80% said they would be more likely to stay at their current company if they had more opportunities for internal moves or were given training to move into a new role within the business. 

Retention rates can be improved. By offering opportunities inside your company, you help people develop and use their skills, encourage them to remain and show them that they are valued by the business—and, crucially, you can fill the skills gaps in your organization very efficiently. 

It may be wise to create internal careers communities, where employees at risk of leaving can be offered relevant jobs, tailored learning routes and career opportunities. In the Beamery Talent Index survey, only 29% of respondents said it would be easy to move to a different department within their organization, while 37% said it would be difficult. Are you making it easy for people to stay? 

If someone is unfulfilled and wants a new challenge, stopping them from leaving their team will likely lead to them leaving your organization. If they can’t move desks, they will simply move companies. 

Building a thriving company culture

A healthy culture can make the difference between an organization thriving, or not. 

People are always your biggest asset, but the focus has shifted, and customers are increasingly making purchase decisions based on the perceived culture of your business. You need to look at how you retain and engage your best people and how you can help them reach their potential, so your organization can, too. 

With a smart internal mobility platform, which matches employees to opportunities based on skills, you can offer your people a personalized, consumer-grade experience. Vacancies and opportunities are clear and shared with employees, so they can plot their own career paths. 

This level of visibility and empowerment helps increase retention and ensures greater engagement, which makes companies more successful. Some of your workforce may not plan to leave, but they might have mentally checked out and need new stimulation; this offers them a vision for the future. 

Moreover, people tend to refer others more frequently when their own career has grown within an organization. The positive knock-on effect of internal mobility is huge; it allows many employees to progress and develop their skills, which boosts morale, loyalty and productivity. This won’t just be felt within one team, but will be experienced throughout the company.

Doing internal mobility properly

You may already allow lateral moves in your business. But we often find that employees are not aware of opportunities inside an organization and that companies do not have a clear, dynamic way to present these opportunities to employees. 

Internal mobility programs that form part of a holistic, skills-based talent management strategy work best. This means looking at your talent as individuals with an evolving set of skills and with dynamic levels of proficiency, as opposed to just considering static collections of requirements that fit an existing open role. Companies should be able to understand not only the skills that an individual has today and the value they currently bring to the business, but also how they can develop and grow with the business. Building a talent-first company means reaching your business’s full potential by unlocking the potential of your people.

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— Ben Slater, SVP of Marketing, Beamery

This article originally appeared in Business Reporter.

Image: Courtesy of Beamery