Developing Company Talent Through Job Mobility

Companies looking for an effective way to develop talent without breaking the budget should take a new look at an old tool—job rotation or, perhaps more literally, job mobility.

The premise of job mobility is to help employees develop new skills and experience by moving them into different positions, departments and areas of operations throughout the company. "It is hard to think of an effective management development effort that does not thoughtfully and proactively rotate the employee through a series of positions that give him or her exposure to different functions, businesses and locations," says Gerry Ledford, president of HR consultancy Ledford Consulting Network in Redondo Beach, Calif. "There is always the choice of how much to emphasize depth and how much to emphasize breadth, but some degree of breadth is critical to building well-rounded managers."

There are some caveats, however. For one thing, job mobility isn't necessarily right for every employee. As an example, technical specialists may not gain anything from job mobility. "It may be best to leave these employees in the same position and let their skills deepen as time goes on," says Ledford.

Moreover, not every department will be a good fit for a change. While it is relatively easy for finance professionals to move into jobs in other departments and areas of operations, it can be difficult for non-finance professionals to move into jobs in finance. "To work in finance, you really have to know your stuff to be credible," says Ledford. But as areas like operations and sales and marketing become more analytical, that two-way street could become more fluid.

Project-level positions could be natural development assignments that could serve as a way to move more people through finance. For example, if finance is conducting due diligence before an acquisition, someone from another specialty highly relevant to the acquisition could be moved into a finance position for the duration of the project.

To ensure this type of movement throughout the organization, companies need to develop appropriate incentives for managers for employee development. As individuals become ready for bigger and better kinds of assignments, managers must have a reason to move those individuals around to develop their skills rather than hoarding them in their own departments. Managers' performance assessments can factor in the number of direct reports who move through a job mobility assignment. "It is appropriate to assess a manager's performance based on whether they are capable of developing others and sending people on to bigger and better assignments," says Ledford. "If they do not, they do not get a favorable performance rating and do not get promoted themselves."

Next time, we'll focus specifically on how finance departments can use job mobility to develop their most promising talent.