Identifying a talent for your company is a bit like trying to look for the perfect Boyfriend/girlfriend: you can see they have some talents dear to your heart, but you are never sure the chemistry will work out …

One can Wonder  : how does one go about transferring in-house skills? And why is it so crucial?

For a start what does internal mobility mean?

According to Deloitte:” Internal mobility and talent mobility is a dynamic internal process for moving talent from role to role – at the leadership, professional and operational levels. To achieve internal mobility, companies must adopt the principles of succession management at all ranks; provide transparent discussion of skills and potential, as well as organizational needs; and; focus on development across critical talent pools, based on business needs”.

Our world has gone global: hence the need for an employee to acquire easily transferrable skills.

A well known French Blue chip company launched a department called high potential employees where employees identified by the HR department as able to develop their skills rapidly across the board i.e. an all rounder or with an expert skill in demand.

What does internal mobility achieve?

• Key achievement is shorter time to productivity which leads to …
• Better Financial performance
• And of course more engagement from the employees and higher retention rate.
• Lastly : training time would be reduced because the employees are already in-house trained

Regardless of it all , the main aspect , according to a report published by Oracle in 2012 is :” internal talent redeployment requires access to talent intelligence—that is, information about the skills and aspirations of employee candidates matched with data on the skills and fit for open positions. This is a process to be put in place by the HR department”

How does one go about it?

the first thing that springs to my mind is : an holistic approach is a must to develop tools for internal mobility as well as:

being highly creative in the approach of identifying tools that will help pinpointing the transferrable skills –

For example :

how can an economist transfer its analytical skills to the launch of an ecological program/foundation for the company they work for? At a first glance there is:

A/ no links

B/ no obvious links identified between the two tasks

However, and that is where identifying transferrable skills and nurturing an outstanding corporate company identity are paramount : one achieves the result of an economist launching a free/ voluntary foundation for the company they are involved with. In effect the economist will be able to work on the new project if he/she operates within the frame of the company corporate culture.

Thus how can an employee develop its skills on the job I wonder?

They key for the company, according to SODEXO, is diversity and more diversity …there is an old British say: “Diversity is the spice of life”. One could transfer it to the business world as: “diversity is the soul of the company”.

I worked in London on a freelance basis for the most open company in terms of Diversity and it was a British company: Transport for London – All ethnics and genders were valued for what they could bring to the company – as long as they had the corporate culture of Transport for London at heart. One of the key values of this company laid within the customer service. As long as the TFL employee could identify with this core value, then any idea improving the experience of the customer was highly valued and taken on board in order to improve the customer experience.

In my view the HR department has the responsibility to put in place a program:

• To enhance the company culture in-house
• To develop diversity though creativity
• To encourage suggestions from internal sources.

A level of transparency and communication at all level is therefore paramount:

SODEXO went about the program in such a way:

“Thus we launched our internal mobility initiative with the goal of helping our employees achieve their career aspirations, and, ultimately attempting to influence the engagement and retention of our top and diverse employees…We began with “soft” internal sourcing: sharing jobs with our employee network groups and sending e-cards internally to individuals on our succession plan. As we progressed, we learned that just sharing information with our employees was not enough. We needed to help them to overcome organizational barriers that make it difficult for our employees to post and compete for positions outside of their markets.”

It can be launched through transparent communication at all levels of the company :

1: According to Veolia and its internal mobility policy: “access to Veolia for all “meaning its internal workforce – For a start it made it job board only accessible to its workforce – which is highly strategic as it has thousands of Employees and I guess a highly holistic approach.

2: Tribal knowledge means strong company culture – synonymous of institutional memory – This is where a knowledge management data is essential – another task for the HR department to set up – through mentoring program and a list of each job specification –

3: An additional approach is to treat each skill as a resource and make sure a member of the HR department is responsible for identifying these resources: resources procurement.

4:Referring to the holistic approach means a systemic approach : I.E the system has its own solutions within its internal resources – a person in charge of the well being of the employees would go a long way and retain its employees as long as his/her role was communicated throughout the board.

5: lastly : the HR department should adopt an Emotional intelligence test and ask the staff to take it on a highly confidential basis – so it identify how strong /medium the whole company is standing.

We , at Vernetticreative, can help your company set up this virtuous path and make your business a top brand to work for !