In the past few months I have been working with organizations who are talking a lot about the “internal mobility” of employees. The recession and the layoffs that occurred as a result have created talent shortages in critical areas. With hiring frozen, the only way to overcome the shortages is to move people inside the organization.
Here comes the rub! Back in the good old 20th century employers could call the shots. After all, there was likely more than one good candidate in the wings. HR wrote policies that restricted movement and placed lots of conditions such as length of service, criticality of the job and so forth on an employee’s potential move. Bosses had to be notified and had to give their permission. Bureaucracy was king and what the employee wanted didn’t matter much.
The world has changed and employees are more and more in charge of their own careers and timeframes. Even in this recession, they have choices of employers and, while most would rather stay in familiar territory, they are much more willing to move on than they were a decade ago. The days of stability and loyalty in corporations are over.
Employers who understand and appreciate this change will have a competitive edge. The best employers are already changing how they think about internal mobility and are putting in place programs to make sure all employees are equipped with multiple skills and are motivated and encouraged to move
Employees are Investors
This change starts with the realization that employees are investors in your organization – not assets. Rather than buy stock, they have chosen to exchange their skill and time in return for engaging work and an agreeable amount of compensation.
Assets can be owned, taxed, disposed of and depreciated. People cannot be. Investors – employees – are looking for a return on their investment and each of them has a built-in return on investment (ROI) meter that is constantly sampling the atmosphere and deciding if they are gaining or losing from a continuing association with the firm. As long as the employee feels that they are gaining, they don’t look for different jobs. But whenever the balance shifts even slightly, employees become vulnerable to any offer that presents itself. That is why having mangers with a history of good employee loyalty and low turnover should be valued.
Here are four things every organization and HR group should be doing or should have in place today:
#1: All policies should be abolished that limit or control how or when employees apply for positions within an organization. Every employee should have the same employment at will opportunities inside the company as exist in the open marketplace.
#2: Companies should make it a policy to encourage employees to share expertise and skills broadly. After all, it is the networking interconnectedness of our employees that add value and allow us to develop new products and generate new ideas. Creativity does not arise in stable, rigid and change-adverse organizations. The most exciting new concepts and ideas come from small firms were people wear many hats and move between responsibilities.
#3: Let recruiters work just as freely inside as outside the organization and let them work on back filling positions that may be vacated by an employee who is moving on to something else.
#4: Create policies that allow employees to try out new jobs for a short time to see if they like it and can do it well. Let employees share their job with some one else so they can sample more than one kind of work or more than one project. Foster a spirit of sharing expertise and skills, not of owning the mind and body of someone.
The policies that restrict or limit transfers and change within an organization are leftovers of the 20th century organizations that are hierarchical, paternalistic and slowly fading away. A 21st century organization removes barriers and builds networks that power creativity and growth.
