Employee internal mobility is an important means of ensuring that an organization has a workable succession plan. Building internal capacity for future work will always come in handy especially when people decide to exit the organization. However, getting mobility right appears to be very complex for HR and line managers. The results most at times have been very disappointing whether it be expat assignments, cross-business or cross-function/department moves. This could mean the importation and exportation of talent within the business especially for multinationals with global footprints.
The failure could be attributed to a number of issues – ranging from organizational objectives, organizational culture, company policies on mobility amongst others. Notwithstanding the many challenges, identifying and resolving the below will bring clarity and finality to the man hours and other resources wasted on mobility.
- The objectives of mobility programs are not clearly designed and planned
- The “wrong” people are moving and for the “wrong” reasons
- No one “owns” the mobile talent; they easily fall through the cracks
- Incentives are not aligned to the mobility programme
Each of these sources of failure reflect the highly contextual nature of mobility. Other elements of talent strategy – for example, talent acquisition, performance management, compensation, career development and rewards, etc., – have to be aligned with the goals and execution of mobility programs for mobile talent to generate returns to the business.
Given the importance of talent mobility as a component of overall talent strategy, it clearly pays to take a more disciplined approach to identifying and understanding the factors that most influence whether mobile talent stays and thrives in an organization. Unfortunately, too many organizations spend far more time managing the transactions side of mobility than addressing the critical strategic considerations mentioned above. A more strategic approach is facilitated by answering six key questions:
- What role should mobility play in the organization’s overall talent strategy?
- Who should be moving and how frequently?
- Should these moves be “sponsored” by management or initiated by employees?
- What kind of internal moves are most beneficial from a business standpoint? Cross geography? Cross business? Cross functional?
- Who should take responsibility for the careers and management of mobile talent?
- Are incentives aligned to support mobility?
Given the kind of workforce and business data now available to organizations and the power of today’s advanced workforce analytics, it is now possible to develop an empirical basis for answering these questions. The application of advanced workforce analytics helps uncover the root causes of failure and points the way to effective solutions and further make projections on organizational talent needs.
As with other areas of workforce strategy, deploying the tools of evidence-based management can enable a truly strategic approach to talent mobility and, in the process, generate higher returns on the considerable investments that organizations make to move their talent around. Another important aspect of mobility programme is who bears the cost and risk associated with the movement – is it the unit/department/country receiving the talent or a special budget should be made available for the exercise? These misalignments will be aggravated in the era where “pay for performance” is the determinant for pay increase and other rewards.
Owing to the fact that most of such mobility programmes are not well structured for implementation, it becomes who is in the good books of someone in authority or has a “godfather/mother”. In such instances opportunistic people can muddle in who gets moved – this will clearly undermine the effect and results of such well-intended movement.
For HR professionals, achieving success at work will largely depend on the ability to ensure an efficient mobile talent module. A well designed talent mobility will reduce employee turnover and therefore manpower planning and forecasting becomes easy.
Identifying talent and moving them to suit both their personal career goals and meet organizational objectives will position your brand to attract the best of talent. This also presents an opportunity to be innovative knowing very well that there is the chance for career advancement.
Source: Bright Ampadu Okyere/Haig R. Nalbantian/Tel. #: 0244204664/Email Address: hrtoday@gmail.com
