Talent Mobility and Your Employee Value Proposition—Don’t Overpromise and Underdeliver…

When you promise mobility as an employee value proposition in the existing workforce, or as part of the recruiting strategy, unintended consequences can occur:

  • Everyone has a different notion about the speed at which movement will happen.
  • You may set up a false expectation about how quickly people will advance through the pipeline.
  • There are not enough VP spots for the people who want them and feel deserving of them.
  • Set yourself up for a lack of continuity and potential negative impact on the business if people move in and out too quickly.
  • There may be only selected business areas in which movement is possible (such as organic growth or new markets), but not every job pipeline will support movement.
  • Lateral movement is not typically welcomed:
    • Mobility must connect with pay practices.
    • You have to create the mindset that demonstrates how mobility will fuel business growth and provide robust pipelines as needed.

Top 10 Things You Can Do for Talent Mobility

  1. Have a clear framework for how talent movement will work in your organization.
  2. Communicate your talent mobility principles to your people.
  3. Connect your career-development value proposition to your employee value proposition in the recruiting process.
  4. Determine what is needed to build the capability of your managers.
  5. Build talent leadership into your management and executive development.
  6. Ensure visible signs of success. Publicize what is working well.
  7. Develop practices that bring visibility to opportunities and candidates, such as weekly talent-movement calls.
  8. Have clear goals and metrics⁠— retention, internal versus external placements, turnover costs, shifts in demographics.
  9. Link talent mobility to long-term strategic planning, i.e. business continuity planning. Make it part of the annual review with the board.
  1. Build talent mobility in alignment with your business strategy.
    Recognize that different strategies call for implementing talent mobility in different ways.

In Summary: Creating a Retention Culture

For high potentials and high performers, that means you have to include and have a strategy for:

  • Coaching
  • Mentoring
  • Connection and collaboration
  • High-level exposure to the BOD
  • Opportunities to work on complex projects
  • Investment in development
  • Recognition
  • Compensation aligned with the talent-attraction and retention strategy
  • A belief in their ability and potential
  • An investment in the tools and technology needed to support your talent strategies

Further reading.

Here are additional resources that I have consulted.


  • Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and why people follow
    Barry Conchie
  • Select Any Great Leaders Recently? Discovering How Future Leaders Think
    conchieassociates.com/media/
  • Learning About Learning Agility High-Potential Talent: A View from Inside the Leadership Pipeline
    Center for Creative Leadership
  • Potential for What?
    The Hay Group
  • Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
    Daniel Pink
  • High-Potential Strategy Maturity Model
    Bersin
  • Are You a High Potential? Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2010
    Linda Hill, Jay Conger, and Doug Ready
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