From the Great Resignation to great ambition
Sponsored by BeameryHiring from within can boost retention and engagement rates – and help you to efficiently build the workforce of the future
Your business success relies on finding, keeping and developing the right people. With all the changes in the workforce – the Great Resignation, changing work/life priorities, a looming recession, a huge acceleration in digitalisation – CEOs must prioritise the question of where the next generation of talent is coming from. And it could already be inside your company.
The biggest competition for talent is no longer a handful of companies within your industry: it’s every company, everywhere. People can more easily work remotely, so the potential pool for talent is widening – but the ambitions of that workforce need to be better understood and carefully harnessed.
According to The Talent Trap, 88 per cent of business leaders surveyed said that acquiring and retaining employees is more important to them now than it was 18 months ago. The latest PwC Pulse Survey found that “the ability to hire and retain talent” is most critical to achieving growth for 77 per cent of C-suite executives and this figure was actually higher among CFOs (83 per cent) than CHROs. But without a smarter approach to internal mobility, it’s not clear that talent really is a top priority – or that businesses will be ready to find the workforce they need for a changing future.
Hiring from within brings many benefits, directly and indirectly, for your business.
Uncovering hidden gems (and unlocking efficiencies)
Until the 1970s, around 90 per cent of roles in organisations were filled through promotions and lateral assignments. Today, just one-third are filled this way.
Thinking of your existing employees as potential candidates gives you a much greater pool to fish from. You get more detail on their skills and experience and (crucially) a much shorter time between identifying and hiring the right person for the job.
Hiring internally saves money on training and development: one study found that staff who were hired externally take three (more) years to get to the same level of performance as internal hires. Existing employees already know the business, have demonstrable track records and can start adding value in a fraction of the time it takes to source, interview and onboard new candidates.
How do you ensure your top talent is uncovered and presented with opportunities to progress? New technologies allow you to use skills to match internal candidates with roles (or projects) – and gives employees a Talent Marketplace to find their own route to development and success.
With an AI-powered skills-based approach, the hidden gems will come to light. And you’ll have quality candidates, faster, with less of the unconscious bias that often hinders progress for certain groups.
According to Gartner, the total number of skills required for a single job is increasing by 6 per cent annually, which means the skills you have today are not the same ones as tomorrow. To future-proof your organisation, you should be looking to build those skills with your existing workforce. Smart businesses are planning to upskill and reskill their existing employees and hire from within to build the workforce of the future.
Stop the leak: retain your best people
According to the Beamery Talent Index, 53 per cent of people are planning to leave their job in the next 12 months. But 80 per cent said they would be more likely to stay at their current company if they had more opportunities for internal moves or were given training to move into a new role within the business.
Retention rates can be improved. By offering opportunities inside your company, you help people develop and use their skills, feel encouraged to remain and seem valued by the business – and, crucially, you fill the skills gaps in your organisation very efficiently.
It may be wise to create internal careers communities, where employees at risk of leaving can be offered relevant jobs, tailored learning routes and career opportunities. In the Talent Index survey, only 29 per cent of respondents said it would be easy to move to a different department within their organisation, while 37 per cent said it would be difficult. Are you making it easy for people to stay?
If someone is unfulfilled and wants a new challenge, stopping them leaving their team will likely lead to them leaving your organisation. If they can’t move desks, they will simply move companies.
Building a thriving company culture
A healthy culture can be the difference between an organisation thriving or not.
People are always your biggest asset, but the focus has shifted: customers are increasingly making purchase decisions based on the perceived culture of your business. You need to look at how you retain and engage your best people and help them reach their potential so your organisation can too.
With a smart internal mobility platform, which matches employees to opportunities based on skills, you can offer a personalised, consumer-grade experience to your people. Vacancies and opportunities are clear and shared with employees, so they can plot their own career paths.
This level of visibility and empowerment helps with retention and ensures greater engagement (which makes companies more successful). Some of your workforce may not plan to leave, but they have mentally checked out and need new stimulation: this offers them a vision for the future.
Moreover, people tend to refer others more frequently when their own career has grown within an organisation. The positive knock-on effect of internal mobility is huge: it allows many employees to progress and develop their skills, which boosts morale, loyalty and productivity. This won’t just be felt within one team but experienced throughout the company.
Doing internal mobility properly
You may already allow lateral moves in your business. But we often find that employees are not aware of opportunities inside an organisation and that companies do not have a clear, dynamic way to present those opportunities to employees.
Internal mobility programmes that form part of a holistic, skills-based talent management strategy work best. This means looking at your talent as individuals with a living, evolving set of skills and with dynamic levels of proficiency, as opposed to static collections of requirements that fit an existing open role. Companies should be able to look at an individual and understand not only the skills they have today and the value they can currently bring to the business but also how they can develop and grow with the business.
Building a talent-first company means reaching your full potential as a business by unlocking the potential of your people.
By Ben Slater, Beamery, SVP Marketing
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Business Reporter Team
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