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By Matt Alder

 

The problems many employers are currently having recruiting talent into their businesses are well-known. Although there is much companies can do to make their recruitment efforts more effective and competitive, ultimately there are just not enough skilled people to go around in many markets.

With that in mind, the case for internal mobility strategies has never been stronger. Moving and retraining people within the organisation is particularly compelling when the acceleration in digital transformation is changing the skills that organisations need at an exponential rate.

A few decades ago this was something that employers just did automatically, but that has changed in recent years. Many companies are now struggling to upskill and redeploy to solve their current issues effectively.

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Multiple factors have contributed to this decline in internal mobility, but shortening lengths of tenure and the sheer speed of business change have certainly played a significant role. So what can employers do to effectively leverage their existing employees at such a disruptive time?

The first part of the answer is mindset. There can be a tendency for managers to be “talent hoarders” and either consciously or subconsciously block or delay team members from moving on internally. At the same time, there is often an organisational bias towards external talent rather than a long-term strategy to train and reskill internally.

Finally, there is an internal talent discovery problem. Many organisations have no idea what skills their people already have outside of the narrow definition of their existing job description.

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The second part of the answer is technology, and while as ever it doesn’t offer a magic bullet, it can go a long well towards solving some issues. Artificial intelligence platforms can help map skills dynamically and create internal job markets. At the same time, digital learning and development technologies can help train and reskill employees at a speed and scale not possible in the past.

However innovative and advanced the technology, though, it won’t be effective without the necessary shift in mindset to embrace internal mobility.

There is still a long way for many organisations to go, but what's clear is that the future focus needs to be as much on mapping and nurturing internal talent as it has previously been on external recruiting.

Talent acquisition needs to be a holistic strategy that looks both inside and outside of the organisation to ensure the right skills are in the right role at the right time.

Matt Alder, producer and host of The Recruiting Future podcast, is a guest writer on behalf of s1jobs.