Integration and internal mobility
That’s it, you’re in! You joined the company you wanted, the job you wanted, and maybe even the manager you wanted! Congratulations…
The tough part begins. Joining a new organization is never easy. Everything is new. It is exciting but also scary because of so many changes happening at the same time.
As HR professional, I’ve had the pleasure to connect with employees at different time of their professional journey - the day they joined, at the end of their probation period, at the end of their first year, when they considered changing job and eventually changed job, when they needed to talk on something specific they were dealing with and finally of course for their exit interview. Topics such as integration, internal mobility, providing and receiving effective feedback, defusing a conflictual situation arise at some point in the life cycle of an employee and are essential to tackle in order to best navigate corporate environment. This article will focus on integration and internal mobility. The second part will cover feedback and conflict management.
Let’s begin with integration. Reflecting back on the discussions I had with employees within their first year and my own experience, those would be my “quick and dirty” recommendations:
Actively listen, understand and network - Make sure you understand the organization you work for (in some cases, it can take up to one year) and integrate yourself the best way possible by building trustful relationships with the people you work with and the people you don’t work directly with but you would like to in the future. Having this curious and proactive mindset from the beginning is essential if you wish to stay (energized and happy) more than for one assignment;
Align and deliver - Immerse yourself in the job you’ve been hired for, make sure you have clarity on what you must deliver, do your best possible to achieve those goals and you may even exceed expectations on several occasions.
Those 2 recommendations could probably be summarized in 2 words: build trust. In other words, you show your employer you are capable to do what they hired you for and you do what’s necessary to integrate yourself in your new work environment.
2 additional elements are usually forgotten during those first months within the organization and sometimes during the entire working period:
Challenge the status quo - the best talents of an organization are usually the ones able to challenge, take ownership and implement with one goal in mind: positive impact for the organization, whether it’s efficiency improvement, better return on investment, path toward more sustainability, etc.
Envision possibilities for your future, project yourself in the organization, have a plan - if you don’t do that by yourself, nobody will do that for you. Your manager, if he or she takes his/her role seriously, may ask you very open questions about what you want to do next and actively listen what you have to say. Your organization may have the best L&D and internal mobility programme, this won’t be enough if you don’t know yourself what you want, how do you project yourself in the organization and what is you plan to reach your goal(s).
18 months to 2 years is usually the time where we start asking ourselves this questions: “what’s next for me?”. If not this one, then maybe those ones: Am I happy where I am? Do I feel challenged enough? Am I bored already? Do I see myself doing something else within the organization? Do I have the right skills to transfer to another team? Do I want to leave and look for another job?
And we all have the answers to those questions…the challenge is to act on those answers by making conscious decisions. Very easy to say, sometimes extremely difficult to accomplish. Is it fear ? Is it laziness ? Lack of confidence ? We’ll come back to this later.
The company who hires you knows more or less what they want from you. They write a job description, spend some time assessing your ability to perform where they need you to perform. They mobilize people inside the organization to interact with you during the hiring process. Bottom line, they project themselves with you and anticipate the benefits they would gain by having you on board, and also the possible gaps or areas of development. If the company knows what they want from you, you should know as well what do you want from the company, from the day you sign the offer.
Where companies still struggle on is internal mobility. Based on this study from Deloitte, “most respondents believed that it would be easier for an employee to fin a new job with an another employer than with their current organization”. Incredible, but true... The study highlights the necessity to recode the norms governing internal mobility such as: making internal mobility accessible to all employees, having a streamlined and personalized hiring process for internal candidates, user-friendly technology and, last but not least, that internal mobility be perceived as a natural and normal career step and not something exceptional or too disruptive.
Now back to you. What do you want from the company you work for ? And what do you need to do in order to get what you want ? I’m not trying to convince you to stay 20 years within the same organization (those times are over almost for everyone although there is nothing to be ashamed about that). But how do you navigate, how do you project yourself and how do you feel connected in the organization you’re working for? Instead of enduring and being a passive actor of what’s going on.
What employers should focus on
Enhancing a true culture of mobility - The challenge with internal mobility is that it is still too often confined into getting promoted and/or geographical mobility. Any type of lateral moves is most of the time not really at the center of the discussions or even negatively perceived sometimes. Opening new perspectives, rethink radically the employee mobility approach and operate a clear shift of culture for the company.
“Hiring people with critical skills is highly competitive; workers who want to reinvent themselves don’t necessarily want to leave their current employer; internal mobility can be a way to embed collaboration and agility into an organization’s culture, which is one of the key attributes of becoming a true social enterprise; and agile organizations and career models dramatically improve employee engagement and commitment.”
Getting organized - Being consistent and offering the right tools to ensure internal mobility is a possibility for everyone in the organization. Here is a non-exhaustive list of important steps that need to be in place in the company to foster internal mobility:
Current open positions accessible in one or two clicks and simplify the application process;
Streamlined and personalized recruitment process for internal candidate;
When a position open up, always look inside before looking outside. Internal employees may apply, great. As a company, having the mechanisms to proactively identify possible internal candidates thanks to succession planning, talent development and relevant information provided by HR is even better. This means working in close collaboration and making sure the company has done absolutely everything possible to look internally before considering external candidates;
Should the internal candidate not be selected at the end of the recruitment process, make sure to provide relevant feedback to the employee and the manager in order for them to act on it and have access to the right tools to do it.
Train and recruit managers with coaching skills - Yes…I know… I’m biased. Nevertheless, this is where internal mobility starts. When a manager doesn’t talk only about performance, delivery, short-term expectations and results. Those discussions should happen of course but if those are the only topics discussed during 1on1s, demotivation, lack of engagement and willingness to look outside the organization will arise relatively quickly. The manager may be afraid to loose someone from the team or simply not trained, not equipped to have those more open discussions and most probably not incentivized to do it. Therefore he or she will avoid more open questions like: “What do you want to do next”, “what makes you happy/unhappy in your job”, or even “what is your dream job within the organization?”. Asking those questions or similar ones and actively listening are an essential piece of the puzzle towards creating a career path for the employee within the organization, building confidence and, as a next step, the necessary skills towards those goals.
What employees should focus on
Be clear on who you are, what you’re good at and what you want - Before looking at concrete positions within (or without) your organization, explore “Who you are” meaning what you believe is important for you: your values, the impact you want to have in your professional life and identifying the possible saboteurs along the way. “What you’re good at” is first and foremost understanding what your strengths are and identifying the environment where you literally shine and excel (rather than focusing on what you need to improve). Once you’re clear on who you are and what you’re good at, you can now focus on what you really want in your (professional) life as you are now able to reflect on resonant actions for you to take. When I start a coaching with a new client, we usually start the programme working and identifying those key elements.
Identify where you want to go internally and the environment that makes you happy and shine - Based on the “self exploration” mentioned above, you can now focus on what you want to achieve within your company and what does this mean concretely in terms of group, team, job, projects, responsibilities, etc
Bridge the gap - Here are some actions to take in order to maximize your chances to make an internal move possible:
Continuous learning and working on targeted skills that will allow you to be considered for a role. You become competent.
Network and find a way to work on a project with the team you want to join. You become visible.
Make a business case and “create” your own job within your company. It’s like building your own house, you design it the way you want, as far as possible. You create your own path.
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