What Outperformers Do Differently to Tap Internal Talent | MIT Sloan Management Review

Career development is a critical component of an organization’s employee value proposition. This fact is one reason organizations continue to tap into underutilized sources of career development, such as projects and short-term assignments. But as noted in this article, another untapped source of career development is lateral job moves — a career move into a new position within the same company, where the occupation changes but the level of seniority remains the same. Interestingly, only 10 percent of job opportunities today are filled with internal lateral hires. This article shares four talent practices that ‘outperformer’ organizations use to drive internal lateral mobility. While not mentioned in the article, improving the utilization of lateral moves will require organizations to remove the stigma of lateral moves as being a sign of a career stall or stop, rather than career growth. One way to do this is through more effective positioning and marketing of these opportunities. What sought-after skills will this opportunity enable the employee to develop? What critical and differentiated experiences will be gained? Also, since many lateral moves do not come with a salary increase, organizations will need to consider how to overcome this barrier. What obstacles does your organization need to hurdle to tap the potential of lateral moves as a source of career development? How can your organization overcome these barriers?  Perhaps this can be a topic of discussion at your next talent strategy meeting.