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What is internal mobility?
For both employers and employees, internal mobility is an important human resources process. However, it should not be confused with external mobility. While the former refers to the change of an employee's position within a company, the latter allows an employee to apply for a job in another establishment.
Internal mobility is a strategy that should not be neglected as it has many advantages. Indeed, in the event that you are short of candidates, you may be able to offer the position to one of your employees. This practice will allow you to retain talent in your organization and reduce your recruitment costs. It is also an opportunity for you to attract the best profiles since you are offering career advancement opportunities.
In this article, we will give you seven levers to succeed in your internal mobility in 2023.
1 - Define the internal framework
A first and most effective point is to define your internal framework. To achieve this, consider developing your relationships with your managers. Indeed, your team leaders are the ones who work with employees on a daily basis. They are the ones who understand the performance and career expectations of their employees. As a result, they can provide you with advice on an individual's career perspective.
However, it is important to know that there are three types of mobility in a company. Indeed, it can be either vertical towards a position hierarchically superior or inferior (very rare), or horizontal towards a position of the same hierarchical level but with different tasks and responsibilities, or geographical to keep one's position but in another place.
Diagram showing the 3 types of internal mobility
To complete the framework, think about defining your implementation methods, by asking yourself questions such as: "How do I distribute my advertisement?", "How do I set up my interviews with the candidates?" or "What selection criteria should I give the most importance to?
Our advice: draw up an internal mobility charter to ensure maximum transparency in your internal mobility policy.
2 - Encourage exchanges between teams
A second (and often forgotten) point to foster your mobility process is to encourage exchanges within and between your teams. Employees can then build relationships with each other in different departments and understand the different businesses that make up your organization and in turn discover the internal mobility opportunities available. In addition to improving human relations, this practice will allow everyone to obtain a more global vision of the company's processes.
Our advice: set up a ritual of presentation of the different jobs and missions of the company at a precise rhythm such as once a month with a defined time slot. By participating in this meeting, your employees will be able to present their daily life, their missions and their activities to their colleagues.
Establishing an introductory ritual is equivalent to promoting exchange
You can also choose a more logistically practical option by documenting the different areas of your business in writing. Thanks to this knowledge, an employee could perfectly learn about another field and discover a particular interest in it.
The French company Michel et Augustin has made a slightly more original choice. Indeed, for several years, it has been offering a pastry training course to about fifteen volunteer employees. From then on, different departments cross paths and can discover each other during their apprenticeship. In-house training is also a good way to promote its employer brand.
3 - Communicate about available positions
Communication is a practice without which the internal mobility process cannot be successful. You have to devote as much energy to it as to the two previous points.
This is why you have to think about the ease of access to information to hope to create emulation. Hence the importance of providing a dedicated web space both internally and externally or defining an effective communication channel to reach the whole company.
Our tip: if you use a corporate messaging system like Slack or Teams, a channel dedicated to internal mobility can be very effective to promote your internal mobility (or at least create interest for another very popular practice: cooptation).
4 - Detecting the potential of employees
A large number of organizations have set up a system of annual appraisal interviews. While the purpose of these interviews is generally to set objectives, they also allow employees to be evaluated on their current position based on their knowledge and experience. Moreover, it is not necessarily easy to know whether or not the employee wishing to change jobs meets the requirements of your job offer. It is therefore a very useful tool to detect the potential of your employees.
However, there is another category of tools that can help you to objectively evaluate the potential of an employee: the Assessment Center. This is a method of evaluating skills based on situational testing. With the rise of digitalization and gamification, more fun and easy-to-use tools have emerged.
It is with this in mind that we created Yuzu. Our solution allows you to evaluate the potential of your candidates or employees (and more particularly their soft skills) in situations developed with the latest video game technologies.
To capitalize on this potential detection strategy, you can, for example, organize a day of fun skills assessments for all your teams or take advantage of simple logistical tools such as Yuzu, so that your employees can assess themselves whenever they want, from their computer.
5 - Follow the employees in their new position
When your employee is promoted, you have a real challenge to accompany so that the internal mobility is efficient. Indeed, they will discover new activities and new colleagues. It is therefore important to prepare his or her integration into the new team and to support him or her in carrying out the new tasks.
In this sense, some companies opt for a gradual change, i.e. maintaining part of the employee's former tasks until he/she is fully acclimatized to his/her new position. Generally, in terms of duration, the transition takes place between 4 and 6 months.
This change may allow for a better take-up of the position
Training is also a solution to accompany a new position to be taken into consideration. A Yuzu skills assessment could for example guide you on the appropriate training courses to perfect the skills of the promoted employee.
6 - What to do if the internal mobility goes wrong?
Despite all the resources employed to ensure your internal mobility, some unforeseen events may occur.
For example, the employee may regret his or her wish, which is why a probationary period should always be put in place.
The probationary period is essential for successful internal mobility
This can allow the employee, if the probationary period is unsatisfactory, to return to his previous position. This is also a two-way advantage since it allows the employer to reconsider his choice.
However, you should know that if this situation was not anticipated in the employment contract of the principal concerned, then an amendment must be made.
7 - Conduct an audit of your internal mobility
If you have already set up an internal mobility process in your company, it is important to maintain it and make it evolve if necessary. That's why it is essential to conduct an internal mobility audit to get valuable feedback on your process.
Therefore, examine your data on promotions, transfers and employee transfers. For example, you can create questionnaires for employees who have experienced a change of position in your company, or you can organize dedicated interviews. This way, you can understand exactly how your employees perceived their own mobility.
Without this, it is impossible to detect certain problems
You will thus improve your human capital management by objectively steering your internal mobility policy.
Conclusion
The world of recruitment is constantly evolving, just look at how gamification has progressed in recent years. It is therefore important to adapt to the desires of the new generations by integrating internal mobility into your HR strategy. It is a guiding principle that can help you recruit and retain talent.
However, to ensure its success, it is essential to integrate the 7 steps you have read in this article. From the definition of your framework to the analysis of your approach. All these practices are complementary, so take advantage of them to get the most value out of each of them.
Finally, internal mobility concerns the entire company, so this approach must be approached in a global manner: from the human resources department, to the talents, to the directors and managers. To support you, don't hesitate to evaluate your employees' motivation and their transversal skills: soft skills.