With more and more businesses citing a reluctance to hire as a result of challenging market conditions, leaders must shift their attention to their existing workforce – focusing instead on understanding where their skillsets lie and how to help them fulfil their full potential.
Aligning leadership strategies with comprehensive talent assessment and development plans fosters internal mobility and workforce agility, and yet many organisations continue to underuse such interventions, resulting in a workforce that is stuck in the status quo, unable to clearly see or pursue growth opportunities.
Three trends that are limiting employee mobility
The world of work looks different now – Flatter organisational structures have limited employees’ ability to take vertical career steps. Our latest research revealed that employees have mostly come to terms with this reality, focusing their attention on developing within their roles before vying for a promotion – 29% of employees said they’re looking to take on more responsibilities in their current role. However, over the past 5 years, just 16% of people have applied for an internal opportunity; and so it begs the question – are business leaders doing enough to understand the aspirations of their people, and facilitate internal mobility in a flatter world?
Misinformed assumptions about their people – While 88% of leaders believe their employees are actively looking for career opportunities within the business, only 62% of employees agree with this sentiment. This disparity suggests that leaders lack critical data around who within their business is actually pursuing career development and mobility, and are instead making blind assumptions about their workforce, resulting in misaligned and ill-informed talent decisions. As a result, the vast majority (71%) of employees aren’t receiving the support they need to grow their careers effectively, and businesses aren’t generating a desirable ROI.
Leaders are too afraid of upsetting the apple cart – Through its capacity in facilitating increased self-awareness, talent assessment is a natural enabler of employee growth and movement – so why are so many people stuck in their current role? When asked what their primary reason for talent interventions is, 32% of leaders said retention – a significantly higher proportion than the 19% who said, “to encourage internal mobility”. So, even if they are incorporating assessment into their talent strategy, having such a hyperfocus on retention means business leaders are likely failing to utilise talent insights as a means to encourage workforce agility, leaving over a third of employees blind to the opportunities available to them within their organisation.
How data driven organisations create agile workforces
Assessment is extremely powerful in generating alignment between organisations and their workforce, enabling both parties to succeed. Our research revealed that 46% of employees want to be assessed in order to understand their current skills, with over half (51%) also looking for workshops and learning programmes to help them bridge any development gaps. If they wish to avoid stagnation, organisations must recognise and encourage this desire for learning in their people; utilising assessment to better understand their employees’ career aspirations, so that line managers can signpost their team members to targeted development support, such as coaching, and internal opportunities.
Whether the end goal is to select the best people for new positions, identify and develop existing talent, or uncover critical development gaps in target populations, talent assessment can provide important data and insights into the developmental needs and goals of a workforce. This information is crucial to any business being able to make informed talent decisions – ensuring they provide the right support, to the right people, at the right time.
Unfortunately, as found by Gartner, only 33% of leaders think their organisation is sufficiently using data to inform their workforce planning decisions – suggesting assessment remains an underutilised intervention. And when employees do not feel empowered to learn and grow, they leave – with 47% of individuals unhappy with their career support now actively job hunting.
To dig into further insights on workforce mobility from over 4,000 respondents, read our new report – From Stagnation to Agility.
