As the talent crisis rolls on, a watertight talent strategy is more valuable than ever, but leaders are still overlooking a potentially game-changing component, despite seeing warning signs on their social media feeds every day. 

Over the past many months, my LinkedIn news feed has been awash with connections starting new exciting roles in the search for better opportunities. Unfortunately, many others shared updates of layoffs due to their companies growing too quickly or changing their strategy in times of market uncertainty.

One post, in particular, stood out to me. The poster led with nothing but admiration for their employer and their time working there. Unfortunately, their role and department had been badly affected by restructuring, but other departments in the same company were still actively hiring. The question posed was, “Surely my skills and experience could be put to other uses within the company I truly enjoy working for?”

It got me thinking about internal mobility and how powerful it could be as a competitive advantage if companies take the time to look internally when considering new hires, and incorporate this into their talent management strategy.

Research shows that 55% of employees believe learning new skills requires leaving the company, and that changing company is the best way to develop new skills (1). Yet 94% of employees would stay with their current employer longer if they offered good learning opportunities (2).

Doesn’t it make sense to develop the talent we’ve already invested in?

4 Steps to Embracing Internal Recruiting in your Talent Strategy

1. Review your obstacles

This step is all about asking yourself and your founding team, “What’s actually stopping us from filling roles internally?” There are lots of good answers; your team is still small; there’s a lack of communication on employee career goals; there's a lack of visibility on employee opportunities. Some of these challenges are addressed below.

But often, there’s no good answer, and tapping into the potential of internal mobility is as simple as rethinking your approach to hiring.

2. Get familiar with employee skills and potential

At Frankli, we believe in a people-centric approach to building high-performing teams, and L&D or succession planning should always start with understanding the skills within your organisation and the aspirations and potential of your people. So many companies miss this opportunity! 

The fairest way to grow talent and create new opportunities is by mapping out and understanding the skills you’ve already invested in through your people. New skills are constantly evolving and acquired, so this will also be an evolving process.

3. Empower your employees

Rather than looking elsewhere, we believe in giving your people the tools to understand their progression opportunities clearly. In Frankli, we do this through tailored and flexible career pathways. When employees can search and visualise the options available, they gain confidence that there’s a genuine opportunity to progress in their career with you.

Empowering the employee should also be about encouraging them to put their best foot forward by giving them a space to showcase their skills, qualifications and goals but also to outline their ambition and potential. Where a skills gap exists, the employee seeks tailored coaching and mentoring opportunities with their peers. New relationships outside their own network form, and employees accelerate new skills development. Learning and development becomes much more specific when we put the employee first. 

4. Build an internal marketplace

Building an internal marketplace allows your organisation to connect the dots between people's skills and open opportunities available to them. At the same time, it should also be about helping the employee discover other role options, learn more from people in those roles and bring suggestions to their manager about a change. Facilitating this approach results in people managers becoming much more involved in coaching conversations, and across the organisation, learning and development evolve into a continuous process.

Investing in an internal marketplace as part of your talent strategy changes the way we think about hiring. It proves a great retention strategy and builds an employee experience that connects people back to the business. 

I’ll leave you with one more statistic - 2 out of every 3 employees said they would stay longer at their company if it were easier to change jobs internally (1). Clearly, it’s time for a change.

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1. Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong? 2. LinkedIn Learning, Building the agile future.