Learning Culture and Internal Talent Mobility in the Modern Workplace: Which Comes First?
Learning and development professionals have been striving hard to provide the best possible learning experiences for employees; however, the commonly heard question remains to be “How do I make employees learn more?”
In this article, I challenge L&D professionals to relook at their mandate strategically to include talent mobility issues and take a second look at the issue from the employees’ perspective:
Employee: “Why do I need to learn?”
Employee Learning and Development are No Longer a Good-To-Have
Employees now expect their employers to provide learning and development opportunities as part of their employment. This trend is driven by the rapid pace of technological change and the increasing importance of continuous learning in order to stay competitive in the job market.
Employers who fail to provide these opportunities risk losing their top talents to competitors who are more invested in their employees’ professional growth.
Development Opportunities Include Building Up a Portfolio of Experiences Through Job Rotations
Job rotations and resolving different problems are valuable opportunities for employees to build up a portfolio of skills and experiences. This is beyond what traditional learning programs provided by academies and training providers can deliver. The varied experiences allow employees to learn more about strategic and cross-functional issues that are critical for employees to operate more effectively within the organisation. These skills are essential for any employee aspiring to take on more strategic leadership roles in their organisations.
Not a Silver Bullet, But Internal Talent Mobility Helps Reduce Attrition and it’s Associated Costs
Reduction in Staff Attrition
L&D professionals need to drive the talent mobility conversation to help organisations get the best ROI out of their learning strategy. L&D professionals cannot just deliver business-as-usual tasks of identifying learning needs and providing learning interventions. They are important, but won’t be enough unless paired with a robust internal talent mobility system to allow the development of experiences and career portfolios.
Providing agency to employees to chart their career and development paths help improve engagement, and also to increase their likelihood to remain in an organisation. This translates directly to reduced attrition-related costs to organisation.
Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that employees who were promoted within three years of being hired have a 70 percent chance of staying onboard, and those who made a lateral move have a 62 percent chance of staying. Those who were not promoted and who did not change jobs internally have only a 45 percent chance of remaining (Report here).
Reduction in Staffing Costs
A robust learning and internal mobility system will set their organisation apart from others who need to constantly hire external “ready-made” talents to staff critical roles, and these people will demand a larger remuneration premium. Gartner estimates that hiring externally costs double of what it costs to facilitate an internal transfer.
Knowledge Gaps from Internal Hires Are Not Necessarily Riskier than Hiring “Ready-Made” External Hires
External hires do not have the firm-specific knowledge to drive impact immediately even if they might have the specific skills required for the role. Organisations need to weigh if an external hire can effectively learn firm-specific knowledge quickly or fit into the organisational culture.
HR professionals and hiring managers need to review if it’s rational to downplay the ability of their internal talents, many of them with proven track records visible to the organisation, to learn the skills required for the role.
Four Components to Operationalize Internal Mobility and Learning
Firms should determine their optimal mix of the following components to operationalise their people development strategy through internal mobility and learning.
1. Understand the Job Requirements of Critical Roles through Role-Task Analysis and Training Needs Analysis.
A good understanding of competencies required for each role through role-task analysis is critical to enable internal mobility because it helps to identify the skills required for different roles within an organization.
This understanding helps employees and their managers better prepare the employees for the desired roles that they’re interested in.
2. Map Competencies Required for Employees’ Desired Roles Against their Current Development Status to Determine Readiness to Assume the Role and to Develop a Customised Learning Plan.
Competency mapping and matching help identify competency gaps and develop learning pathways and experiences critical to prepare the employee to acquire the necessary competencies for the transfer. Having a clear understanding of competencies helps ensure that promotions and transfers are based on objective criteria and merit instead of subjective factors such as personal connections or favouritism. This can foster a sense of fairness and transparency within the organization and encourage employees to pursue internal mobility opportunities.
3. Develop a System that Recommends Vacancies that Matches An Employee’s Career Development Path.
A system to highlight vacancies that match the interest of employees would be critical to facilitate internal mobility. Technology and automation would be useful for larger organisations to match competencies with vacancies more efficiently. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence can help organisations determine future in-demand skills required for specific roles and future-proof the organisation’s skills bank.
4. Creating a Culture of Learning and Growth.
Managers and employees must adopt the “not yet” mindset where employees are given objective feedback on what competencies they’re lacking and create opportunities for growth. It’s not about “you don’t have the right competencies to do it”, but rather “you don’t have the right competencies to do it YET”. This culture of continuous development of employees draws highly motivated and driven individuals to the organisation.
Learning Policies Implemented Strategically Can Drive Real Impact on the Business
We can be sure that answering to employees’ questions of “What do I need to learn?” is critical to driving a stronger and better-skilled organisation. Creating the right incentives for employees to learn and develop themselves professionally would need to come first before people want to learn. The combination of internal talent mobility and learning strategies would help strengthen the talent pipeline and makes the organisation well-positioned to have sufficient options for staffing its critical roles.
Ensuring that employees can grow and develop themselves professionally and personally can be a game changer for employers who want to continue being at the top of their league.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies and views of any associations that the author is affiliated with.
About the Author:
Zu Hui is currently the Associate Director (HR Transformation) of Singtel, Asia’s leading communications company. He is responsible for driving Singtel’s people agenda with different stakeholders to make Singtel an employer of choice.
Prior to joining Singtel, Zu Hui spent 17 years in the Singapore Army and last performed the role of Head of Training Development where he served as the in-house learning and organisational development consultant.
He specialises in performance improvement of organisations through learning and organisational development initiatives using design thinking, agile, learning design methods, and the adoption of digital technologies.
His other interests include:
1. Understanding how businesses work
2. Understanding how financial systems work
3. Equestrian activities
4. How mechanical watches tick
He enjoys discussing topics related to human performance improvement, process improvement, learning development, organisational transformation, and advancing social good.
Connect with Zu Hui on LinkedIn
