Part 5

Your internal pipeline of potential

Internal Mobility
Process

Part 5 - The final

Retaining your employees to grow their careers within your organisation

So now your people are enthusiastic about their future in your business. They’ve identified where their skills are strong and where they need to be better. Each one of them has created a development plan. You’ve given them a personalised learning experience. And thanks to your internal marketing plan, you keep reminding them of the opportunities there are to move around the business.  Effectively tying all these elements together will enable you to successfully implement and improve internal mobility across your business.

The final step? Having an accessible, centralised system that provides an inclusive pipeline of internal talent for your recruiters.

We know recruiters’ lives aren’t easy. Some can have upwards of 50 requisitions on their plate at once. So filling individual roles needs a targeted approach to enable them to source from your existing internal talent. The beauty of having a central system where employees assess their skills and rate themselves against other roles is that it also serves as a talent database to identify potential candidates within the business.

This is more than a job alert on the internal job board too, or a pipeline of people who have previously applied for similar roles. It’s an intelligent, skills-based CRM of internal talent with validated skills and defined future career aspirations.  It enables recruiters to be proactive – they don’t have to rely on posting roles on the internal job board and hoping people see them and apply. In short, it’s the holy-grail for in-house recruiters.

Having validated skills assessments is also crucial for gender balance and inclusion. Your employees are more likely to have realistic development plans and confidence in their skills.

This means more women will be empowered to apply for the roles they may have been less likely to go for in the past. And if you approach them first, you remove the barrier of making that initial application, one we know is linked to gender imbalance.

And it gives everyone a level playing field to be considered for roles, not just those who have been earmarked for ‘potential’.

Employee vs. candidate journey

It’s hugely important to give your employees the same experience you’ve invested time and money in giving to external candidates. Actually, no. Give them a better one.

Managing the experience your colleagues have when applying for roles is even more important. Should they be unsuccessful – and many of them will – giving useful feedback and tips on how they can develop will keep them engaged and motivated to stay with you. You can encourage them by pointing them towards resources, further training or other job opportunities that could help them bridge their skills gaps. Consider setting up a mentoring programme where colleagues can volunteer to coach others wanting to progress through the business.

Losing some people will be inevitable when they’ve been unsuccessful for an internal move; but any steps you can take to minimise these losses and encourage people to try again will mean attrition is kept to a minimum.  And if they’re determined to leave, make the exit experience a positive one, leaving the door open for them to return (usually better skilled and more experienced) and increasing the chances of a positive review on Glassdoor or Indeed.

Creating experiences that connect

At Electric Circus we’re an experience-led team. We understand the challenges of recruiting, retaining and developing talent. Our expertise blends creativity, digital solutions and communications strategy to create experiences that engage and connect with your employees through every phase of the talent lifecycle.

Whether you’ve read something intriguing about what we’ve done for other companies, or you’ve got a challenge that you can’t get your head around. Or even if you just want to know where we got our name.

We’re always happy to chat.  Get in touch below.

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