Our workforce is on pause – It’s time for organisations to take action

As employees rethink what they want from their careers and organisations struggle to keep pace with a landscape defined by rapid change, traditional career paths are dissolving and employee priorities are shifting – creating a talent landscape where mobility, growth, and support have never mattered more.

However, as identified in our 2025 research, just 18% of employees were considering an internal role move in the next two years; and this is following less than 1 in 5 having made an internal switch since 2020.

But why the sudden halt in movement?

Some might argue the fault lies with the individuals:

• After all, 46% of employees say their employer is responsible for their future career path – seemingly shirking responsibility of owning their own career
• When asked what their desired outcome for talent interventions is, 32% of leaders said employee retention – compared to just 19% of respondents who said “to encourage internal mobility”
• Half of leaders say they aren’t planning to make significant investment in career interventions for their people in the next 5 years

However, the data also tells us that solely blaming employees would be a misguided conclusion:

It’s no surprise then that 71% of employees say their careers have stalled due to insufficient career support. Individuals have become lax in their efforts to drive their own careers, while organisational leaders are prioritising short-term goals of retention over the long-term growth of their workforce.

And now the knock-on effects are being felt

A significant portion of the workforce has become overly comfortable in their roles and are actively avoiding career progression:

• Recent data found that 42% of employees have refused promotions in favour of preserving work-life balance
• Nearly a quarter of UK employees say they’re unhappy at work, with 41% considering a career overhaul
• The latest Global Talent Barometer found that 60% of UK employees, while willing to stay with their current employer for the immediate future, are actively job hunting

Meanwhile, the individuals who are looking to progress their careers are growing increasingly dissatisfied – likely with the sub-par support provision provided by their employers – and are looking to vote with their feet:

Organisations now find themselves on the precipice of a workforce crisis; facing the potential exodus of key talent as well as a bottleneck of unutilised skills, with many employees remaining steadfast in their reluctance to grow and lead the business forward in years to come.

So what can organisations do to start getting ahead of all this?

As discussed in our latest report, organisations must take a longer-term perspective and treat career support as an enabler of internal mobility and retention – providing it proactively, from the point of hire and all the way through employee tenures. When employees have regular access to comprehensive career support, they’re over 2x more likely to apply for internal roles and stay with the business – an inclination that could easily stem the unwanted loss of talent.

Some organisations are ahead of the curve on this one, with 44% of ‘career development champions’ providing tailored internal mobility programmes and over half (59%) proactively sharing internal job openings to encourage greater movement and ongoing growth within their workforce.

In acknowledging career support as the 2nd highest driver of employee engagement, and using workforce data to understand skill gaps and employee appetite, organisations can generate a detailed view of where and how talent could be redeployed – not only during times of change, but also in instances where individuals express a desire for new experiences and development.

Interested to find out more about how we can help mobilise your talent? Get in touch today.