Internal mobility: 4 pitfalls to avoid

Sommaire:

1. Do not open 100% of positions to internal mobility
2. Be opaque about internal opportunities
3. Not taking psychological bias into account
4. Consider internal recruitment to be different from traditional recruitment.

Internal mobility is a key issue for any organization, and a methodical approach to the subject will enable sustainable improvement and generate benefits at every level: employer brand, employee commitment, significant cost reduction. However, it is also important to be aware of a few classic pitfalls when it comes to implementing internal mobility initiatives.

Falling into these traps can waste considerable time and negatively affect employees' perception of the opportunities open to them. Here are the 4 most common mistakes.

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1. Do not open 100% of positions to internal mobility

For your internal mobility policy to be effective and applied at all levels of your company, the rules must be simple and known to all. Probably the most important of these is the following: any job opening must be advertised internally.
The advantages of doing this are numerous:

- The rule is simple to understand and apply. It gives you the opportunity to raise awareness on the subject of 100% internal mobility within your company
- You create a new reflex for both recruiters and applicants: think of the internal talent pool for any recruitment,
- You increase the perceived transparency within your organization: why should position A be open internally and position B only externally? According to what criteria? Who makes the decision?
- In the event of successful internal recruitment, you save both the costs of external recruitment and those of the potential departure of the person who has just made the move.

2. Be opaque about internal opportunities

Once everyone knows and applies rule number 1, it's time to give visibility to all these opportunities. A number of questions need to be asked, and answers found for each one:

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- How does an employee access opportunities? Is there an internal marketplace?
- Is the application process known to everyone in the organization? Is it simple?
- In the case of a structure involving thousands of people and hundreds of opportunities, how can an employee sort through them?
- What incentives are there to try one's luck with in-house opportunities? Do leaders communicate on the subject?

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‍3. Not taking psychological bias into account

Psychological biases affect us all, whatever our background, age or good will. They cannot be erased. However, it is possible to combat them, with a set of collective measures. Implementing an internal mobility policy without accompanying it with measures to take account of diversity and inclusion issues is not enough. Beyond the obvious ethical aspect, there is also a financial issue at stake. All studies today conclude that the most effective teams are those that are the most diverse, in every sense of the term. The Richemont Group, for example, has set up a multidimensional diversity grid to better grasp the problem, with nine criteria taken into account:

‍- Age and experience
- Gender
- Personality (introvert vs. extrovert)
- Language
- Ethnic minority
- Disability
- Family status
- Socio
-economic background
- LGBTQ+

Ideally, anyone should be able to apply internally for opportunities. This is not a matter of a formal prohibition on doing so, but of deeper issues, including self-censorship. ‍It is possible to combat this phenomenon with proactive measures, including:

- AI tools specifically designed to avoid these biases and present opportunities to all relevant people, without exception.
- Setting up a network of mentors, who have evolved in an inspiring career path, regardless of these biases (you can be what you can see).

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‍4. Consider internal recruitment to be different from traditional recruitment.

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This is one of the most common mistakes, and can have serious consequences. To ensure successful internal mobility, you need to be careful not to treat an internal move differently from external recruitment.

This starts with a healthy competition. Encouraging internal mobility does not mean favouring internal resources over external candidates. It simply means giving all applicants a fair chance.

This will create a healthy balance between the arrival of competent and different resources, recruited on the external market, and committed and motivated employees who progress internally. When a recruitment is carried out internally, it means that similar requirements have been validated in terms of years of experience, diplomas, business knowledge, soft skills, adaptation to the future team, references from former managers or colleagues, etc.

Finally, once the recruitment has been validated, don't neglect the onboarding procedure: even if the new employee has a head start because he or she already knows certain tools and is familiar with the group's culture, don't assume that he or she will be immediately operational. Don't skip any steps in the onboarding process.

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Conclusion : 

You now know the main pitfalls to avoid when considering internal mobility. These are just general principles, which can be applied to thousands of different situations, depending on the structure concerned.

If you'd like to find out more, and receive support and tools on the subject, discover Palm, which has been designed to meet these challenges.

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