LinkedIn Learning’s 2023 Workplace Learning report found that the C-suite’s top priority is keeping employees motivated and engaged. Their second highest priority? Giving employees opportunities to move into different roles within the business.
We wanted to find out more about how learning and development (L&D) can help organizations support internal career mobility. So, in this episode, we spoke with Megan Dillon, senior manager of L&D at Q-Centrix, Rebecca Gaboda, CPTM, organizational development manager at Skyward, Inc., and Chris Massaro, CPTM, manager of learning and professional development at Androscoggin Home Healthcare and Hospice, to learn more.
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Additional Resources:
- Developing Future Leaders: An Experience Framework for Career Mobility
- Agile Certification for HR and L&D
- How L&D Can Support Career Mobility for Employees of Marginalized Groups
- Unlock Career Advancement With VR Training
Learn how to create employee journey maps that support internal mobility by downloading the complimentary job aid below, courtesy of Training Industry’s Agile for HR and L&D Certificate program.
The transcript for this episode follows:
Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Business of Learning: The learning leader’s podcast from Training Industry.
Michelle:
Welcome back to the Business of Learning. I’m Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, editor in chief at Training Industry. Here with my co-host Sarah Gallo, a senior editor.
Sarah:
Welcome. Today’s episode of The Business of Learning is brought to you by Training Industry’s Agile for HR and L&D certificate program. Here’s a brief message from our sponsor.
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Michelle:
Today’s employees want opportunities to grow and advance their careers, and if organizations don’t provide them with these opportunities in-house, then they’re likely to look for them elsewhere. To learn how organizations can support internal mobility and improve employee engagement and retention as a result, we’re speaking with Megan Dillon, senior manager of L&D at Q-Centrix. Rebecca Gaboda, a Certified Professional in Training Management and organizational development manager at Skyward, Inc., and Chris Massaro, a Certified Professional in Training Management and Manager of Learning and Professional Development at Androscoggin Home Healthcare and Hospice. Megan, Rebecca, and Chris, welcome to the podcast.
Rebecca:
Hello, welcome.
Chris:
Hi everyone. Thank you very much.
Megan:
Thanks for having us. Excited to be here.
Sarah:
Perfect. Well, to get started, I’d love if you could each share your own definitions for career mobility with us.
Rebecca:
Sure, I can jump in here. This is Rebecca. When I think about internal career mobility, for me it’s really taking advantage of shifting people into roles, whether it’s up, down, vertical, whatever direction that looks like, that better suit their skills and interests or the business needs, all while keeping them in the organization.
Megan:
Awesome. That was really well said. And mine’s very similar. When I think of internal mobility, I really think of it as something that we do to encourage employees to take ownership of their career paths, but also to support them in developing the skills that will be beneficial for the organization in the long run.
Chris:
Those are great definitions and I would agree with them. The piece that I would add is, when you’re thinking about internal mobility, and Rebecca stated this, you have to remember that it’s not… We often think of it as promotions or upward movement and it is a lateral move also, or anything that challenges or stretches an employee’s responsibilities and giving them that opportunity to grow both professionally and personally.
Sarah:
Perfect. Thanks for sharing everyone. Now that we’re all on the same page here, why is it really important that organizations, especially today do support internal mobility for their employees?
Chris:
Three or four years ago, I probably had a different answer for this, and now that we are very much in an employee-driven market, I think a lot of what we have to look at internal mobility is so much about retention. There’s so many reports out there, I was just reading a SHRM report, how retention starts to decrease the longer someone’s been there. You have an employee for their first year, they’re really happy, they’re excited, so if you don’t offer those opportunities, you’re going to lose a really talented employee to your competition. Or maybe they just leave. We’re dealing with quiet quitting and the great recession and all those terms that they’ve been using. But I think more than ever, it’s always important in any job market. But I think right now it is so important for us to really focus on our ability to train internally, whether it’s leadership development, upskilling or retraining, to keep those really great employees. And I think everyone on this podcast would agree, it’s not always about compensation and salary. People want a sense of, “I have an opportunity to grow with my current employer.”
Megan:
I think you’re absolutely right, especially when we think about retention. In preparing for this podcast, I did just take a little look at what the research says about average tenure and if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2020, it reported that average company tenure was about 4.1 years per employee, which was a decrease from, I believe 4.6 years in 2014. You’re absolutely right, Chris, when we think about our market today and quiet quitting and all of the factors that play into retention. I would really argue that the downward trend in tenure is a great reason for organizations to create a plan to develop and grow their employees, especially in an effort to encourage internal mobility.
Rebecca:
And wouldn’t you agree to that? When we think about retaining employees, that flip side of that is onboarding and recruiting and finding new ones. And so, that too is very costly, it’s extremely challenging. And so, that’s one of those elements that, if you are supporting internal mobility and people moving to the right seat, so they say, making sure, like Jim Collins said, “Good to great,” in that book, he’s talking about getting the right people in the right seats. And so, you want to make sure you’ve got your people in the greatest skill and passion area, because that’s really what makes your business flourish and all of those profits to be reached and all of the data numbers thing that the people helped produce. I think that’s also another really important thing that organizations need to think about. And ultimately, if those employees, back to that retention, if the employees aren’t happy, they’re feeling undervalued, underutilized, they’re going to leave, they’re going to find a place that fits them better.
Chris:
Rebecca, I want to build on something you had just said, and we’d always don’t think about this because, it’s not a clear key performance indicator that we can always measure, and that’s employee satisfaction, employee happiness. And there’s a lot of those intangibles that we have to think about when we’re thinking about really promoting and getting behind internal mobility. It increases your reputation as an employer. Yes, you may give these people opportunities to grow and some leaders get concerned, “Well, what if we do all this training and spend all this money and they leave?” Well, what if you all of a sudden, [inaudible 00:07:07], have a reputation in your industry of, “Wow, this organization really creates great leaders. We need to keep an eye on them.” It had a lot of those intangible benefits that we have to consider such as organizational culture, it’ll increase diversity opportunities, it’s going to increase your reputation. But most importantly, you’re going to create a real sense of belonging in your organization and increase your employee’s happiness.
Michelle:
Definitely. Those are all great points. And you’re absolutely right, Chris, that employee satisfaction is incredibly difficult to measure. And so, creating those opportunities for engagement are key. I think it’s important to recognize that each job role across the business requires a unique skillset. How can L&D help prepare employees for roles in different departments or functions within the business?
Chris:
I think this is one of those areas that we look at where we really have to look at the lateral moves. And we often talk about terms in learning and development that we don’t always apply to internal mobility, but job stretch, job shadowing, even creating cross-functional teams for projects is an opportunity to support those other roles and other functions in our organization to help prepare. And we can really think of it as, if you do this, you’re going to create very agile employees who can jump on different projects and increase creativity innovation, but you’re also going to give them a chance to look at other roles in the organization and say, “Hmm, it may not be a promotion, but I’d really love to move over to marketing. I’d really love to move over to manufacturing.” Or, “I led a cross-functional team and I really haven’t considered leadership.” I think a lot of those things that we don’t always associate with mobility are our opportunities for us to help other departments and other leaders really embrace.
Megan:
Yeah. I think that’s great and that’s exactly what I would think of when we think of fostering learning and development across the organization, especially for upward mobility. I think a lot of organizations do some great things with their mentorship programs. And so to your point, Chris, bringing in mentors who maybe don’t necessarily work in your department or aren’t necessarily your step up or your manager, I think is a great way to also increase that cross-functional interest. And to your point as well about cross-functional collaboration, that’s a great opportunity for stretch assignments and really learning more about what different parts of the organizations do, how they function, and maybe how your skillset can eventually add to it.
Rebecca:
I was thinking the mentorship programs as well. And when we think about, as an employee group and as a company, it sometimes can be scary to think that you are going to be talking to somebody about going to a different part of the organization or switching roles or doing any of that, because everybody knows that if they’re good at what they’re doing, you want to keep them there or everybody needs people doing the jobs in the different departments. It can be scary to build support around preparing employees for different roles. And so, I think one of the things that L&D can do as well is, help to build that comfortability in internal movement, because sometimes that alone is scary. And so, an L&D could step into just help the organization learn at how important it is to put people in their strength area. For management to really watch the people on their teams and see, “Hey, they’re really good at these things but maybe not so much here. And where could we better utilize their skills to advance business goals and even the individual and that personal and professional growth?”
That mentoring can do that, lunches with leaders where we get different groups, cross-function groups to get together and learn about each other. We’ve got a great marketing group that they’ll do a lot of day in the life videos or snippets or things like that, so that people internally can even see what is it like. And then one of the other elements that I think is good is, for L&D to help the different departments even with thinking about what onboarding is like, breaking it down into when you bring somebody new into your group, what are those basic things that need to happen? What is that training program? Because it could very well be different than the role you’re currently doing. Just making sure that you’re preparing the people for a potential new role. And also those other roles to think about, this is going to be maybe not a brand new person to the organization, but still brand new to our group. L&D can help facilitate some of that conversation as well, in my view.
Chris:
And Megan both brought up very important topics that again, I think I’m going to stay on this theme, is these things that we don’t always associate with internal mobility. But you both talked about what we consider as learning and development professionals of informal learning opportunities. And that always isn’t something that we plan and isn’t always something that we structure. But we can formalize informal learning and make sure we have those opportunities. But I think that the most important thing, building on both Rebecca and Megan talking about looking at different ideas, and I think Rebecca, you talked about sometimes it’s scary. And this isn’t necessarily our role specifically to internal mobility, but as learning and development professionals, we have to be change champions. We have to encourage change and build that culture of being disruptive and being innovative.
And when you think that way… And it’s, again, it’s what we talked about in the Certified Professional Training Management program, we have to be able to get a seat to the table for all these types of change initiatives that we know are going to be important. And another part of our role that is really important when it comes to internal mobility is being learning analytics specialists, being able to do needs assessments and look at past employee surveys and past needs assessments or evaluation, and identifying those needs in departments that department leaders may not see.
Megan:
As I was listening to both of you speak, one thing that both of you said something that made me think of this, I think that L&D can do a lot to really help and support mobility within the organization. But I also think that while it doesn’t traditionally fall under the role of L&D, succession planning is still something that’s really important in an organization and it’s something that we can’t overlook if we want this culture of mobility. And so while L&D may not, that may not be a function that lives under learning and development, I certainly think that we can support succession planning when it comes to, what are some programs, what are the training activities that we can develop to support the learning, growth and development of individuals who are interested in moving into different roles? And then how can we align those to whatever career plan and pathing we have in the organization?
Chris:
Megan, you pointed out something so important in our role, and that is us being not only champions of change, but champions of creating a culture of learning within our organization. And one of the things that I think we can really create is, if we create that culture not just of learning, but of lifelong learning with our organizations, that’s going to give people, I believe in a better mindset of looking for those opportunities. And then internal mobility, whether it’s vertical or lateral, is something that we just naturally do. It becomes part of our culture and it’s so embedded in what we do, that it just becomes an opportunity that people consider.
Michelle:
Definitely. Those are all excellent points. I’d really love to hear more. I’d love to hear how your own organizations are supporting internal mobility with training and development. What does that look like?
Rebecca:
I can jump in first. And the reason I’m going to jump in first and maybe Megan and Chris you’ll piggyback on these too, but I’m going to just share a little bit about how we prepared for the possibility of people wanting to do internal movements. This past year, we took a very major look at our job descriptions in the past two years. Our job descriptions just from the bears start of things and said, “let’s revise these. Let’s really take a look at how our roles have shifted over the past couple years.”
And that was something that we’ve done here and there, but never really organizationally said, “It is time, everybody stop and do this.” And so we really took a focused effort on that. We have all 157 jobs, we redid all the job descriptions and then we went into that next layer and said, “Now, let’s look at the competencies for each of these roles. And so, what are the different competencies that’ll show success for an individual in these roles? What do we look for? What’s going to make somebody really thrive in this role and somebody maybe have a little more challenges?”
And then in doing that, it allows people to see where they are in their role, what they need to do to get to that next vertical level, if that’s what their goals are, or even looking across the organization to say, “Hey, what does this other competency look like for this other role over here?” And all of that was made public and visible for all the people in our organization. We also had adopted a performance management tool that we have been using. And in that tool there’s different growth areas that you can build out for people. It’s that goal setting, like manager in your one-on-ones talk about, “What are your growth goals in this company?” And really start putting focused effort on helping to provide experiences, those informal collisions that we have. And even the formal ones, maybe L&D can jump in and provide some skills training. We also utilize a learning tool with a bunch of content that we can draw from for some of those skills gaps.
And then finally, we talked the informal stuff earlier, but the organization has really done a lot to have those cross department conversations. Don’t be afraid to go and ask questions, be curious, find out what you don’t know and build those networks. Those are just a few of the things that we really initiated in the last year or two and are now starting to build upon and see maybe where we can even be doing better. I’m looking forward to hearing what Megan and Chris are doing as well, to see maybe what some next steps are for us in that area.
Megan:
Awesome. That sounds like a lot of thought and consideration has really gone into how the organization is thinking about mobility and upward movement. That’s awesome to hear. And similarly, we recently purchased an LXP or a learning tool that we really vetted and made sure that there was a significant amount of content that would really apply to everyone throughout the organization. And that’s something that we’re really excited to see and increase in adoption and user ability in as well. And then our organization I think does a great job of developing fairly robust cross-training programs. When people come into the company, they’re onboarded and they’re onboarded into their program, whatever it is that they’re going to be or whatever role they’re going to have. And then after they’ve been in their role for a little while, for those who are interested or for those who are high performers, we have several different cross-training programs available for them to complete while they’re working in their role.
And so, this is really just an opportunity to get the additional learning and to develop themselves all while still maintaining their normal role. And then once they’ve acquired those skills, we have a really great, I think, application based, almost like a apprenticeship or internship that our folks can go on simultaneously with their role. And so, we’ve seen a lot of really good stuff come out of that and it’s certainly exciting to be able to offer that to our employees. And I will say, I think that that’s a great way to retain people, if they know that they get to get this additional training in conjunction with their current role that’s going to allow them to move up, I think that’s great.
Chris:
I’m actually really excited about both. I’m writing copious notes as we’re all talking to come up with some of the ideas that I want to implement. There are two things, one, Rebecca, you had talked about identifying competencies and you also mentioned, you see the competencies, where we can put them in other places. I think that is so important. And I’m considering going back and looking at our job descriptions and see where we overlap. And Megan talking about giving those opportunities for apprenticeship, we’re really unique in healthcare and there’s a couple industries in healthcare, information technology, manufacturing that already have built in job levels, help desk specialist, one, two, three. In healthcare, in nursing we have certified nursing aids, we have licensed practical nurses, RNs. We are also doing that. We always talk about clinical ladders or we call them career ladders.
One of the things I’m looking at is building career [pathways]. As we all talked earlier about this idea, I think it was David Craig, I can’t remember the author, but there’s this idea of what’s called a T-shaped person and it’s someone who has the skills and abilities to move upward, but also the skills and ability to move across within the organization. It’s very unique within healthcare to have people in very specific roles. And you think of a hospital, all the different departments they have. Coming in as someone who doesn’t have a clinical background but has a learning and development background, I asked a lot of questions, “Why can’t we cross train? Are there some skills that overlap? Are there some competencies that overlap? If we have a shortage in one area, but we don’t have the ability to give hours in another area, why can’t we give them that opportunity to move across departments, move across service areas?”
But it also makes us more agile as an organization and it has that built-in opportunity to be on a cross-functional team or a job stretch. And it’s a really unique situation in healthcare. But something that you had said, Megan, we are also looking at reaching out into our community and partnering with education as well as the community colleges and starting to do apprenticeships for some of our entry level positions such as certified nursing aids. And I’m really excited about that partnership.
Sarah:
Perfect. Great. Thanks for sharing everyone. It’s always really exciting hearing what learning and development leaders are rolling out and these really innovative and forward-looking programs, which just reinforces what we at Training Industry believe, which is that L&D is really a business function and it’s really critical for the business. Thanks for sharing more on your own experiences there. And on that note, I’m also hoping you can share more about how in a tight labor market, L&D can really help develop the skills and competencies that the business needs within its existing talent? What does that look like?
Chris:
I wanted to jump on first, because I was just having this conversation with some colleagues and I think we coined a new phrase. In a tight employment market, especially when it is employee driven, they have a lot of opportunities and not only are the people being proactive looking for other jobs, they are being, and to use the term poached or headhunted all the time. And you’re seeing more and more, and there’s a lot of evidence to this, a lot of articles and reports coming out, that more and more employees are stepping up and asking for more responsibilities, asking for promotion, asking for raises. And a lot of the times, if we are not looking at those opportunities, we don’t offer them those promotions or those opportunities till maybe they threaten to leave. We came up with this, we are in a phase right now, that we’re in threat retention. We keep people and we give them the opportunities only when they’re threatening to leave the organization.
We need, as learning and development professionals in this market, need to be so much more proactive in having those opportunities laid out and having those conversations with leaders at all level, to really identify what’s going on with your team, have a better understanding of not just what the needs of the department or organization, but what are the individual needs of your people and where do they want to go? And we always ask this in interviews, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” But often we forget to ask, “Hey, once someone has been hired and having those, I think either Megan or Rebecca talked about having those coaching and mentoring opportunities and those coaches can be having those really important conversations with our employees.
Rebecca:
When you said the whole pointing a phrase or finding this way to loop it all together, we use the term, and I throw it around more than most, but of a magnetic culture. I say that all the time. We need to create a magnetic culture at our organization where people just want to come to it. Some you bring them right to that thing that brings them in, and others they just hear about it and they want to know more and they just start to get attracted. And so when you’ve got these tight labor markets, you’re really trying to find a way to say what sets you apart to bring those people in. A lot of the times the skills can be taught, you can bring somebody into your organization and as long as they’ve got those, I call them power skills, they’re not soft skills anymore. To me, those are the most powerful things a person has.
If you can bring them in with those power skills and they’ve got some alignment with the competencies that you’re looking for in these roles, the skills can come and that’s where L&D can help too. Putting together those curriculums, really digging in with the department leaders and saying, “Let’s reevaluate. What are the key skills? What are the key competencies?” Really having a strong understanding of what those needs are. Chris, you mentioned needs assessments, and Megan, you’ve been talking about really understanding the people and the functions, and that’s really key for us as we take a look and say, “Do we have a strong grasp of what we need in our employees and what is going to produce the desired results, whether it’s for the individual or for the business, and then making sure that you’ve got the right people?”
Don’t just hire because you think you need numbers. Can you think about your processes? Is there a way to streamline some of the stuff that you do? Maybe you don’t need more people, maybe you just need to reallocate or this whole internal mobility, maybe you need to shift things around. Skyward is definitely not afraid to start new things. We start new departments and, “Hey, there’s a need over here, let’s find somebody. Who’s a champion of this?” And let them go. And so, when you talk about L&D being this change agent, this group that helps to make that more comfortable, a lot of the times it’s getting people prepared to think about what’s not here yet, what is missing? And that really helps keep people excited, where they may not be so apt to leave right away when they’re first feeling bored, because they might just say, “Hey, what about this new idea?”
And I think by L&D helping to coach that learning culture, that growth mindset, the, “Hey, the sky’s the limit, what are we missing?” We’re a company who’ve got a lot of people in our organization who have been here a very long time. We’re a family owned company, which is brilliant and wonderful. Bringing in newer voices, help keep that culture fresh and that workforce excited. Those are some things that I’m thinking about. And one other piece, we can’t forget about ourselves. As learning and development professionals, we so often are thinking about what everybody else needs, but the CPTM program, Training Industry, there’s so many things on LinkedIn and networks that you build. As a learning professional, I even say, one of the great things that we can do is build your network of other learning professionals to find out what they’re doing. Stuff changes all the time. What are you doing that works with your groups? And do that, a lot of sharing and gift giving, as I like to call it.
Megan:
That’s great. Rebecca, from the onset, you mentioned something that I loved, which was, it sounds like your organization has really taken the time to look at the job descriptions and determine what competencies and skills your employees around the organization need to function in their role. And so, when I think about how can L&D help develop the skills and competencies the business needs, well, I think first of all, it’s about identifying the skills and competencies that the business needs, because we can’t develop what we don’t know. I think that is a great step and should be something that every organization needs to look at before they think about, “Now, how we can develop the people to get them to where they need to be or to even just cross-train them on various skills?”
And then secondly, I think that organizations can really develop that competitive edge in this time by having a very robust L&D program. And I think that that can look a lot of different ways. We probably think of, “Well, we need to provide all of the snazzy training and beautiful e-learnings.” And all of that is great, but I think a lot of it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, so creating a strong mentorship program, creating job shadowing opportunities, partnering with other areas of human resources to ensure you have a succession plan and then what L&D initiatives or what L&D resources align to that succession plan, so that folks have a plan for a path forward. Ultimately, I do think a lot of it comes back to creating an organizational wide culture of learning and professional development, accompanied by a really strong professional growth plan as well.
Chris:
Absolutely. I think Megan talking about this, the role that we have as learning and development professionals, there’s so many things that we can do and we have a lot of those things in place already. And the challenge, the piece I wanted to add that we haven’t mentioned is, in a tight employment market, a lot of organizations are also having some challenges, coming out of the global pandemic, having budget constraints. There’s a lot of reports out there, that all of us in training and development have seen our budgets get reduced. That’s a concern of also making sure that, and Rebecca, I think this is part of what you were talking about, making sure that we take care of ourselves as learning and development professionals, but making sure we also take care of our role. And making sure that we show value in everything that we present and everything that we do. And going back again to our CPTM program, and this is an opportunity I think with internal mobility to that foundation of the CPTM model, is showing how internal mobility strategically aligns with all of the goals of the organization.
Rebecca:
You had asked about the skills and competencies, but there’s another layer to our employees too. It’s that whole, just personal growth and engagement, which we did talk about in the beginning of the conversation. But for L&D groups, when we think, Megan, you mentioned it, we think trainings and e-learnings and all this, but it’s so much broader than that, which you recognize and acknowledged. And it is because we even look at saying, “What kind of experiences are we providing for our employees to help them feel like their whole self is being considered and being looked at the organization?”
And we’re finding ways to create clubs in our organization where we’re connecting people with hobbies and things that they’re enjoying, where it definitely helps with that tight labor market. It definitely helps to keep your existing talent, because they feel more connected and more part of something. They’re not just coming to work and, “I’m here to do my skill job and go home.” They really feel more fulfilled coming to work with an area where they feel like their whole person is being acknowledged. And so as learning and development professionals too, adding in that wellbeing stuff, adding in some of those areas to help support that side of the person I think is also just really important.
Michelle:
Those are all such great points. Megan, I think it was you who made the point that L&D can really create a competitive edge for companies in today’s market. I would really love to hear more around that. How does supporting internal mobility really benefit both employees and the business?
Chris:
I think one of the things we’ve really been talking about and touching on is those intangibles, and Rebecca just talked about it, of showing the value. One of the biggest benefits is, and we all know this, we see it both in evidence and reports and statistics, but also see the anecdotal evidence that, employees want to know that… We just talked about showing the value of learning and development and employees want to know that they are valued in their organization and that there’s a very fluid career path for them. If they decide, “I don’t want to be in this department anymore. Am I going to have to go to another company? Am I have going to go externally to find the satisfaction for me personally?” And I think it’s important that when we build these things in, we build these opportunities of everything we’ve talked about today.
It shows as employees that, “Yeah, you’re really important to us. We value you. We want to keep you as part of this family, as part of this organization. We’re going to give you these opportunities.” And we have to really embrace that and create that. When you do that, it’s going to benefit the organization on so many different levels. We have the numbers of decreased turnover, increased retention, job satisfaction, but when we really disseminate it down to that individual employee, the greatest benefit for us is, we’re going to have a happy, satisfied, productive employee who wants to stay with the organization.
Megan:
I agree. I think not investing in employee career development can definitely lead to an organizational culture that doesn’t value growth or learning. And we know that that can have a negative impact on morale and productivity, just as Chris alluded to a moment ago. When we think about it, even from a cost perspective, there’s cost associated with hiring, there’s cost associated with layoffs, believe it or not. And so, if we can avoid that by training our employees internally, that’s going to benefit us as well from a cost perspective. I think that by not investing, the risks are broad, they include a lack of motivation and engagement from our employees, difficulty attracting and retaining folks like we’ve been talking about. And then just the inability to keep up with changing industry trends.
I think a lot of organizations are becoming keen to the idea of using learning and development as a value proposition. What used to be, a tuition reimbursement program for example, can now be, “Come into our organization. Not only will we provide you with a very robust onboarding program to do your job, but we will also give you opportunities for professional development through apprenticeships,” like we talked about earlier or, “Through cross-training or these learning tools that we have made available to us with free content for you.” Again, going back to that question about competitive edge, I think L&D truly can be a competitive edge if used correctly.
Rebecca:
I love that piece of used correctly. People back then used to think, “Oh man, we have to do this training. We have to do this professional development. How many hours do I need?” We’re now, you’re seeing the shift, L&D is here to stay. It always is going to change every other job role. But people are now, it seems like they’re craving that. The research shows, the articles show, people are craving understanding what their career development is and their career growth is. They want this stuff. And so, now we are an ally, we’re a support group for a lot of those individuals. And I was reading an article the other day, and they talked about this study by HALO, which was new to me, but it was talking about the engaged employees, which we’ve talked about a handful before, but they say, “71% of the executives are saying that employee engagement is critical to their company’s success.”
All right. There’s 71% of our senior leaders in our organizations are saying, “Yeah, employee engagement is critical.” It went on to say that, 85% of employees are not engaged. If everybody at the top is understanding this is super important and 85% of the people aren’t engaged, you can see that those numbers are alarming. It’s great that everybody’s thinking this is very important, but it’s pretty eyeopening to say, “Most are not engaged.” And so, to support that internal mobility maybe can help build some excitement and the understanding that there is growth opportunities here, we’ve been talking happy employees, they feel valued, they’re going to excel in their learning, they’re going to feel more fulfilled. And really when we think about that internal mobility, when you allow people to shift roles, when you allow people to move up, move across whatever that may look like, you are allowing somebody to come in and give a whole new fresh look at what you’ve been doing.
It really helps to poke holes in the whole, “Well, that’s just how we’ve done it.” You’ve heard that a hundred times. And so, bringing in new people from the organization is such a huge advantage, and it’s a very different advantage than bringing somebody from the outside, which has its whole own level of benefit. And that’s a whole different episode, I’m sure. But you get people who really understand the inner workings of the organization from many different areas and you really start to see where your inefficiencies are and you really start to get more fine-tuned and streamlined in the things that you’re doing. That’s a win-win for the employee, for the hiring managers and all the way up the line and the business as well.
Chris:
Rebecca, you made me think of a term I just heard recently called inboarding. This idea of bringing someone from one part of the company into another, you don’t have to spend as much time if they’re going into a new role, because they understand the culture, they understand the mechanics, they understand all the external concerns that you have with competition. They understand the organization, they understand your industry. And I think also one of the benefits, both Megan and Rebecca touched on this, of giving these opportunities and all these different opportunities to train and to move into other departments.
But what I think one of the great benefits, and Rebecca you talked about this, we have to be disruptive in how we think about internal mobility. But if you have this workforce that can do multiple jobs and really thinking about that lateral move when it comes to internal mobility, you become, and we talked about this earlier, a very, very agile organization. And that gives you a competitive edge, as we talked about earlier within your industry, to be able to move quicker, to innovate faster, and to come up with those disruptive and new ideas.
Rebecca:
I’ve got to add to your inboarding, because have you also heard the term outboarding? I’ve heard that one recently too and it’s one of those… It’s the whole onboarding from the beginning, inboarding from that middle section and then that outboarding, because we know people are going to leave. And so, maybe it was a lack of internal mobility opportunities, maybe it was money, maybe it was a change in and who knows why. But take the time to find out why, because that could definitely help you as a learning and development community too, learning what are we maybe missing? And so, I love that you brought that up, because I think it does have a place in this conversation as well.
Michelle:
This is great. I’ve taken so many notes here today. This has been such a great conversation. Before we wrap up, are there any final key takeaways that you’d like to leave our listeners with?
Chris:
I think there’s one that we’ve been talking about a lot. And we have to remember, we often hear internal mobility, we think about upward movement, we think about promotions, and it is also lateral moves. And we have to consider those opportunities, whether it is structured learning or informal learning, to give people an opportunity to look around the organization, to find other things they might be interested. You might have someone who’s really great in their role, but you haven’t tapped in to their real strengths and their real competencies. And you put them into one of these opportunities to work laterally, whether it is a job stretch or a cross-functional team or leading a project, and all of a sudden everyone looks at them and says, “How did we not know we had this all-star here who can do this?” And it gives a chance for you to identify a really untapped opportunity in your organization.
Rebecca:
And a final takeaway that I think about is really, be clear with your communication and be transparent about those career paths, the succession plans and the growth opportunities. The more you can be clear about that stuff and have it be easily accessible, the better that’s all going to be in the end. And the final thought is listening and asking questions. Not that this is anything brand new to anybody, but hopefully it makes you hear it more and more, so that you’ve got your eyes out for it, you’re paying attention a little bit more to those little cues that people might be talking about, so then you’re thinking, “Oh, they may be interested in leaving because they don’t think there’s an opportunity here.”
And so, we want to keep the people from wondering if the grass is greener on the other side. We don’t them jumping that fence to the other side, so let them see what’s on the other side of the river in that same fence. Keep them with your organization, but give them a little more of maybe where they’re going to have that better fit. And so, that’s what my challenge is to the listeners, is to say, really keep your eyes open and your ears open to the conversations that are going around, because sometimes people don’t just come out and say they’re looking for something else or they’re feeling like they’re stuck. We need to help get that from them to help them find their best spot.
Megan:
Awesome. I think for me, one of the big takeaways after talking through what upward mobility looks like or mobility looks like in general throughout the organization, internal mobility rather, excuse me. I think for me, one of the key takeaways is L&D can’t function in a silo. And I think while we play a significant role in creating an organizational wide learning culture that facilitates mobility, whether laterally, whether internally, I think it’s really, really important that we engage our stakeholders, that we acquire cheerleaders, we get folks on board from across the organization, who can really help with the key pieces, whether it’s creating a succession plan, so you’re engaging your recruiting team or creating a personalized learning program for various roles throughout the organization, so you’re engaging with teams that maybe you traditionally don’t. As Chris alluded to earlier, I think that it’s really important that we draw as many folks in as possible into our L&D initiatives to get something like this off the ground and get it championed across the organization.
Chris:
As I’m listening to Megan and Rebecca in everything we’ve talked about, but with your final takeaways, I remember an analogy that I used some time, and all of you may have heard this and some of our listeners have heard this, I think it embraces the idea of giving opportunities for internal mobility, is there’s a CEO and a CFO talking about creating a new training program. And the CEO is like, “This is really important. We have to do this. We have to give these opportunities for our employees to grow and give them all these chances to learn.” And the CFO says, “Look, we don’t have the money to do this. It’s not in the budget. I can’t.” The CEO again, “It’s really important.” And the CFO comes back say, “Look, my concern is, what if we train on these people and spend all this money and they leave?” And the CEO comes back and says, “Yes, but what if we don’t train them and they stay?”
Sarah:
Yeah. Super, super powerful. I love that. Well, on that note, everyone, it’s been such a wonderful conversation. Me as well as Michelle have taken a lot of notes, I’m sure. Thank you all for being here and sharing your thoughts with us. Chris, Megan and Rebecca, how can our listeners get in touch with you after today’s episode if they’d like to reach out?
Rebecca:
Well, this is Rebecca. You can find me on LinkedIn, Rebecca Gaboda. I’ve got the old CPTM tag behind me, so that can help identify there. And I’m with Skyward. I also am on Twitter, so @RebeccaGaboda. And then email’s fine too, it’s just rebeccag@skyward.com. Any of those are probably the best ways to get started. I’d love to connect.
Chris:
I would agree. I think the best way to connect is on LinkedIn. It’s under Christopher Massaro, I also have the CPTM [tag], and I would love to connect with some of our listeners and hear their thoughts on this topic.
Megan:
Awesome. I am Megan Dillon. And on LinkedIn, it’s Megan E. Dillon, and I’m always looking to connect and share ideas with other L&D professionals. Feel free to find me on LinkedIn.
Michelle:
To learn more about and L&D’s role in supporting career mobility, and to view the highlights from this episode in animation, visit the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Sarah:
And don’t forget to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. We love hearing your feedback. Until next time.
Speaker 3:
If you have feedback about this episode or would like to suggest a topic for a future program, email us at info@trainingindustry.com or use the contact us page at trainingindustry.com. Thanks for listening to the Training Industry Podcast.
