President, Career Transition & Mobility, Leadership Development & Coaching, and HR & Talent Advisory, LHH
Internal Mobility & Career Development Insights: LHH at SHRM 2024 in Chicago! 🎉
At the 2024 SHRM Annual Conference in Chicago, LHH hosted a panel diving into key HR strategies, internal mobility, and ...
Transcript (23 segments)
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John Morgan0:00
So thank you so much for joining our conversation on redefining internal mobility. I do have to comment that the third of our panelists, Adam, is unfortunately not with us. Thank you very much, airline cancellation. I will add, I woke up this morning to get another airline cancellation where two of my daughters are now stuck in Europe and can't get home. So, you know, we dance, we pivot, and the show must go on, right? So that's what we're going to do. Ready to get the conversation started? Excellent. All right, let's level set first.
So Adecco and LHH have run a Global Workforce of the Future study for four years, this is the fourth time that we've done this study, and this one is focused on great potential. Great study, over 30,000 respondents, 23 different countries. So it's massive, lots of great insights and data. We're going to talk a little bit about some of the key findings. I encourage you to download and take a look at the report yourself. We'll put a QR code up towards the end. You can take a look at that. I will also now invite you back to our booth after the conversation here because we'd love to be able to continue the conversation and we're at 2432. All right. Oh, that's right. Yes, we're going to see us doing this a little bit. So go to 2432 and we'll look forward to continuing our conversation there.
So, Meredith, to get things started, as I read the report, one of the things that was clear to me is that we have moved out of the Great Resignation and we've moved into this global uncertainty. Do you agree? Seeing it?
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Meredith1:52
Yeah, it's pretty significant. And what's happening is that we're seeing that employees are staying in their roles because of this fear, this uncertainty, but they still want a lot of opportunity. They still want to develop and they are still looking for you, organizations, to help them on that path. What's the result? We have a passive talent pool, essentially. And it's a great opportunity for organizations to think about investing now in your talent because if you do, your talent acquisition, your retention strategy, becomes your biggest differentiator. And I think that's a great place for organizations to be today.
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John Morgan2:39
Now there was another astounding finding in the survey, I felt, and that was that more than half of the responders said that external factors had more control over their career than they felt they had. Think about that for a minute. More than half of the people who responded, 30,000 employees responded. More than half of them feel like their career progression and growth, it's in the hands of external factors and they do not feel that sense of control. That's a little daunting. I find that very concerning because we know that mindset is one of the biggest determining factors of performance. And so if we don't reengage and if we don't help empower, well, I don't need to say where we go from there, right? It's not positive. So it's a critical opportunity for us. We now at this moment have a workforce who is not satisfied. We have employees who don't feel that they have a sense of control over their development and their future growth. Silent quitters, anybody recognize this? Seen it somewhere? Folks who stay and aren't engaged. However, if we do invest, we have the opportunity to reengage, to support, and to enable the workforce.
So we know that our roles, regardless of our role and whatever the market influences are, that we all, every one of you here, me, Stephanie, we absolutely want future prospects for our career. I mean it is our livelihood. We want to make sure that we know where we can go, where our skills are going to be moving us. Our report is as you see, I think one of them up there says that 72% of employees globally contemplate their career plans quarterly and what's not up here. So I guess that's right here. What's not up here is the 18- to 24-year-olds as well as the 50-year-olds plus are contemplating their careers weekly. Weekly? A lot of contemplation. They're really looking at what am I doing? Where is my career going? And so that's a lot of them thinking about what's happening, where they're moving.
So while there's a lot of contemplation, what we're finding and what the study shares is that there is lack of career progression. So as an organization, that is consistently one of the top five reasons that employees leave up front. Okay. Is that there is no career progression for them. What are the other four? Salary obviously right up there, well-being, sense of purpose, and then for those that want to potentially become their own boss. Sometimes that sounds better than it actually is in many ways from a career standpoint. We can talk to that. But again, 50% of employees say that their employer, the company, is responsible for understanding the changing nature of their jobs. So think about that. That's different. Most employees realize their career is thereof, you know, they need to navigate, they need to network, you need to move within the organization. But now they're saying, I don't know what's coming. I don't know what jobs are out there, what's around that corner. I'm relying on you, my company, my employer, to tell me what the future looks like, what the jobs look in the future here. So again, 50% of employees are saying that. And then on the other side, 42% of the survey respondents share that the company, again, is responsible for upskilling them, to making their skills be relevant. You know, again, that they are doing the job, that they don't know about what's coming, but that we're upskilling and helping them navigate those waters. So very different dynamic from owning your own career path to really putting a lot on you and the company from an employment perspective with how they can move forward with their careers.
With that, 61% of employees are extremely confident. They're confident that their skills are transferable to other industries. So again, they're looking at you, the company to help them navigate what jobs are coming. They want you to upskill and help them understand and get better in their role and also give them those stretch assignments and opportunities. But now they also are feeling very comfortable and confident, different than it was quite a while ago, that their skills are going to be transferable to different industries. So with that, from an employee-employer perspective, this means that your talent retention strategies need to be rooted in three things. You need to be rooted in mobility. Mobility is key, giving opportunities within the organization that also helps a lot with cost, retention, redeployment, all of that. Giving them the skills that they need to do the jobs, not only today, but in the future, as well as growth. Giving them opportunity for growth.
Yeah, really good insights. Thanks, Meredith. You know, LHH has helped individuals with their career navigation for decades. That's what we're originally known for. Helping an organization create their strategy for internal mobility. It's a little bit different, but we do know that there are some common factors that help to ensure success. So you may be wondering, what are those? How do we get started? LHH was the first to formalize an approach and a structure, if you will, to help align individual career aspirations and goals with an organization's and a workforce requirements package that essentially we have the career transition and mobility practice that we are a part of. But in that we've been able to define specific roles and responsibilities that ensure success. We have employees, managers, and the organization. Three legs of the stool. Without one, it doesn't work. All three are critical. Employees from the perspective that they own their career. They need to be enabled to own their career. Managers because they need to enable, they need to have critical conversations, and they need to be willing to support. And the organization needs to create the framework, the structure, to allow mobility to occur. Now this could look different in each organization, but those three aspects are critical.
Further, we know there are four aspects that help ensure success. First is define your talent mobility or your internal mobility strategy, your framework. What does that mean for you? What's the infrastructure? How are you providing line of sight and visibility and transparency for internal positions and roles? How are you equipping and helping people who don't own their career progression? How are you looking at your current workforce as your talent pool? That's the first thing. The second are the tools, the processes, the resources that you provide to employees to empower them to own their career. Self assessments, reflection activities, various types of tools that they can then look at their own skills, their interests, their motivations, their value, what they bring to an organization and their style, and helping them think not just about that next role, but think broader about their career, where they are, where they want to go. The third, of course, is the organizational support and the communication. Transparent communication about how the organization is supporting. This was interesting. When we surveyed, most of the organization said that they have an internal mobility strategy. Here to guess how many employees said that they felt their organization supported? Anyone want to guess? Well, very low. 33% of the 30,000 employees responded said that they felt their organization supported internal mobility. That's a big gap between what organizations think and what the employee experience really is. So it's a tremendous opportunity. The fourth, of course, is the role of the manager. There is not a talent strategy where the manager doesn't play a critical role. They're critical in all aspects. We need the manager to be having the right conversations. But the challenge is most managers are not comfortable with the performance conversations as well as career progression. So that leads us in a tough spot, a really tough spot.
Yeah, absolutely, Stephanie. So managers, I'm going to just speak to that. Managers are critical. I mean they are the people that are in the path of any career development for any individual. I mean, it is their direct leader, your boss, supervisor, manager, and employees have repeatedly told us in this survey as well that we hear it all the time, is that they expect their organization to guide them toward the workplace of the future, which we shared earlier. But where does that guidance come from? That guidance comes from their manager. So those managers need to be trained in the progression of how do you have career development conversations. How do you help the employee population navigate and have the joy and enjoy what they're doing and movement and activity that they're going to be staying with the organization? So managers that are trained to identify and promote skills growth is key. It also is, I'll say on the survey, it was unfortunately the number one critical mobility barrier that employees saw was their manager. So you know, as you've seen over careers, it's like most time you're not leaving the organization, you're leaving your direct manager. Many times for employees, 46% of workers share that they don't feel that their managers would support them in a move in their goal. That's almost 50% of the employee population that feels that their direct boss would be in their way of movement. A manager. So what is that word? I guess that's hoarding. It's a hoarding of talent, is really critical. And it is one area where, you know, it's a bit short-sighted as the managers have a job to do. They have a role, they've got their team that are helping them progress with what their goals are for the organization. But many times it's easier to keep your best talent because they make your life easier and then they're not moving around. But that is extremely short-sighted for the overall organization. So if you think about the happiness of that employee of giving them the new skills that they can learn in a new role, it's developing their talent and their career expectations. It's really putting a limiting factor on the opportunity for you to keep that person and the opportunities that they bring to the organization. So, you know, we see a lot of hoarding and I'm sure you do as well.
I think as an organization and an employer, you need to give those managers the skill sets to know that it's beneficial to them when they're helping those people that they work with every day move forward in their career and be happy with them. Hoarding is tough and I will say personally, like letting go of great talent is also really, really tough. So you've worked in this space for—we won't mention yours or for a little bit of time, right? You got some experience for that area. So I'm curious what sort of personal experiences have you had when it comes to internal mobility and the manager's role?
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Meredith16:27
Yeah, absolutely. I actually have one, Stephanie, that is going on right now. And it's one where it was tough. It was a tough scenario at the time, knew it was the right thing to do. But now I'm somewhat reaping the rewards of that. And so just going back, I had an individual that worked for me for about two and a half years, just that perfect, perfect colleague that is on your team, strategic, does their job, no complaints, puts their heads down and really loved what he did and came to work with that attitude every day, which we all absolutely want on our team. Ideal, ideal power. And there was though, over the two and a half years, we had a lot of career conversations, which all leaders want to have, and I knew the space in our business where he really navigated to. That was where he wanted to go. And so I will tell you, I kept giving him job opportunities. I never wanted him to leave, candidly. Never wanted him to leave, but I kept putting things in front of him. And one, it made him feel really good that me slash the company were very interested and were caring about his success in the organization. But then secondly, one of those jobs caught his eye and unfortunately he did leave. He left my team, which then, you know, there's a gap of time. Let's be honest, by the time someone leaves your team, six to nine months it takes to either replace them, but it also is harder on the team, the whole team because they're covering and doing things. So yes, there's a six to nine month time frame that's difficult. But the good news is, is that he has navigated in the organization and then I have a wonderful opportunity of bringing him back into the team. But the key thing was, one, he's a talent that any company would want to take. If he went out on the marketplace, he would land very quickly. But I will tell you, he is loyal, like so loyal because of the organization's eyes being wide and giving him opportunities. He doesn't want to go anywhere else. So that's one thing. And then I'll tell you, I have a brilliant HR partner. So the HR is critical in this role because, you know, I have my team and that's my realm, but my HR partner listens to every other leader and knows, oh, we've got an FMLA over here, we've got this need over here. So when she brought us all together, we have navigated this so that not only is it interesting and unique, we're doing something very outside of the scope of what we've done before, but she connected all those dots to make this happen. And he's joined our team again. So I love it.
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John Morgan19:14
What a great story, really appreciate that. Thank you for your insights. Before we wrap up, I want to open it up for some Q&A. Do you have questions? I suspect that some of the questions might be pretty specific to your organization. So again, we're going to welcome you back to our booth 2432 where we have a little incentive for you to come back. But generally, do you have questions about internal mobility, about an internal strategy, about the manager's role, about how you embark on or advance if you already have some sort of strategy in place? We have a few minutes if you have some questions, please. Right in the back with a mic. Yes.
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Audience Member20:00
Thanks for this wonderful session. It was quick, but very interesting. My question is, you mentioned that a lot of employees think that the managers are the one blocking, if I can say that, career progression. So what would be your solution or suggested ideas for one to, I mean, to go over that hurdle?
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John Morgan20:26
Yeah. So you get the manager, the employees think the manager is responsible? Yeah, well, so like the whole thing, it's not a single answer, right? It's not a single solution. But if you go back to those four critical components or aspects that drive success. First and foremost, it's the framework. And in the framework are defined roles and responsibilities. And again, it can look different from organization to organization, but having a framework, having the roles defined, having transparent communication about those roles and expectations, I think it's part of it, right? What sort of expectation is being set and communicated? Managers themselves, what is their skill set, their comfort level? And what are we doing to help enable them to have the right conversation? So I'm talking to one of my team members and they say this is your job to do XYZ. Thank you very much. Let's talk about our partnership and what is it that you can be doing to support and lean in and own your own career development progression. Here are the tools, the resources. Here's what I can do to help support you. At the end of the day, we firmly believe that career development has to be in part owned by the employees. They're the ones who know themselves best. So we've got to communicate that. We've got to create the infrastructure, build the right pathways for each of the roles to be able to execute the design framework. Does that help? It helps, it helps and it's not easy.
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Audience Member22:00
No, it's not easy because there are situations where you would have an employee who does all of them, all of them, you know, self-assessment, the skills, all of that. But you also mentioned that some managers don't want to let go of that, right? So, what is the situation where an employee has done all of that, but faces a manager who knows that if I lose this person, for the next twelve months I'm lost because he or she has the skills that I need and I will not find them in the company. I need to have this position approved in the workforce planning to be hired. So it will take me so much time to replace this person.
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John Morgan22:33
And I think that's where I think the partnership, and I'm done, I'm going to flip it to Meredith to respond as well. But I think that's where the partnership because if you think about the three legs, I always think in terms of the triangle, right? And one aspect of the triangle is the employee, the other it's the team or the group that's doing the work, and at the other it's the organization. You can't make a decision that benefits one point of that triangle and disadvantages another. The decision point has to sit somewhere in the middle. So transparent conversation about I support you and I want to help you move on. And here's where we are today as a business and this is what we need. And if we could collaborate and work, so we're helping you to get to and at the same time meeting the needs of the organization today. That's the way I look at it. Meredith, I'd love if you'd respond.
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Meredith23:17
Yeah, no. And just building on my example, the example of the individual who you were having career conversations with all along. I mean, as a manager, you have a lot of things that you're talking with your employees on. Knowing that I was having those career conversations or I was putting those jobs in front of him, I knew every time I did that, I would have a conversation about, okay, let's look at potential talent of replacing. So while my difficult time was six to nine months, it really would have been a year if I hadn't been kind of prepping that in the background. So there's lots of nuances to this and it's about teaching your manager, your management, how to navigate those waters and have those conversations. And there is a clear structure that helps you do it. Still, it's not easy. Not easy.
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Audience Member24:13
Hi there. I'm not sure how to frame my question, so I'll give you my scenario. I actually have managers and leaders who support career mobility, and I support a marketing team and they're very good about lateral moves and knowing who has what skills, love that, as is the organization, right? So we've got policies that says if you move laterally, you have to be in a role for six months to get promoted and you've got to be in a role X amount of months to qualify for X. So we have policies that seem to block people or restart the clock for them for certain things. So my, I guess my question is from an org perspective and creating the framework, what are some of the other logistical things that the org has to think about? Like one that comes to mind is how many limits do we put to people, right? You have to be in a role for a year, you have to be in the level for a year. What does that look like? Are there best practices that the org should be thinking about about how quickly to move people and how to be consistent across the org? Because that can be very chaotic if you move everyone around. So a little bit of a scenario to see what best practices or insights might be. We still need to do that.
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Meredith25:25
Well, and what came to my mind is that every company is unique. So, it is that every organization has a little bit of a different lens to that. I understand someone in a role for six months because you just transitioned, you just had them on the team, in accounting, and you bring them in. So there is that transition time that makes sense for kind of an ROI of putting them in a new role. But I would say it's all about navigating your culture. First off, the Internet culture has a huge impact, as we all know, to the organization. But I think those, you know, the plan, the culture, your individual needs of the organization, at least that's where we would—
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John Morgan26:09
Yeah, I 100% agree. And I think there are policies in place that were set in place for good reason. And I think the world is a little different and it is the perfect time to be reevaluating policies that may have been set a long time ago and some of which should still stand and maybe others not. I think that when it comes to placing a time frame on how long someone should be at, part of it is, if we make a move, right? Again, I'm a visual person, so I'm seeing the triangle, right? And in the triangle, there is a benefit to each of those three aspects of this move. What is the ultimate outcome we're trying to achieve? Is it leaning more because it's what the employee wants? Is it leaning more because it's what the organization needs? What are we trying to accomplish? I personally am not a fan of things being locked in stone and unable to be negotiated and discussed. We live in a world that has to, that we have to be agile. And so I think that also means we've got to look at the decisions that we're making and think holistically about not just today, what's the implication tomorrow, and help that guide our decisions. That does not give you a really simple answer about do this, this, and this and it'll be easy. No, it's a constant opportunity to evaluate and consider. And as Meredith said, I think culture cannot be underestimated, the significance of the impact. Thank you.
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Audience Member27:37
Thank you.