HR Leaders Share How to Speed Up Internal Mobility Inside the Company and Keep Moves Fair

In order to ensure that internal moves are equally legitimate, we use the same set of core criteria to evaluate both internal and external candidates and allow employees to see the positions before they are opened up externally. In order to prevent any possible gaps from forming, we also require a simple transition plan involving the duties of the employee, the process of knowledge transfer, and an estimated date when the transition will take place.

One of the things that has helped increase the number of internal applications is the inclusion of career options in one-to-one meetings with managers rather than waiting until employees find out about new positions on their own. Managers talk to employees about their future careers and the skills they need to develop in order to get into a particular position.

Internal moves work best when employees know what opportunities are available and what skills they need to move into those roles. We also need to make sure the transition is planned properly so that an employee moving to another team does not leave a gap in their current team. Clear role expectations, open communication, and continuous skill development can make the process fairer and smoother.

One step we took was connecting internal career opportunities with skill development. We used Skill Lake to help employees identify and develop the skills needed for roles they were interested in. For example, an employee looking to move into a team lead role could work on relevant leadership, communication, and team-management skills before applying. This gave employees more confidence to explore internal opportunities and helped managers have a clearer view of whether someone was ready for the role.

The fairness problem with internal moves is almost never the decision — it's the sequencing. If a manager finds out their strongest engineer is leaving the same week the transfer is approved, the manager backfills in a scramble, the move gets political, and other people quietly stop applying for the next opening. What actually keeps this fair and fast, across 450+ engineers on live enterprise delivery, is separating the "yes" from the transition. We approve the move as soon as it's a good fit, then run a fixed overlap window — typically two to three weeks — where the person is still partially on the current project specifically to hand off context and help identify or ramp a replacement, rather than just disappearing on the next sprint.

The step that actually moved the needle for us was posting open project needs internally before we ever open an external req. It sounds small, but it signals to people that growth doesn't require quitting and reapplying somewhere else — and it forces receiving-team managers to plan the handoff with the current team instead of treating it as a surprise.

The most common reason people left us was not money. It was a field installation engineer who wanted to move into design or software, or a support engineer who wanted to move into training delivery, and who did not believe the move would happen here. The frustrating part was that we were often hiring externally for exactly those roles at the same time, because managers did not want to release good people and create a gap on their own team.

The step that changed it was a rule with two halves. First, every open role is posted internally for a fixed window before we advertise it outside, and anyone can apply without needing their manager's permission to do so. Second, and this is the half that made managers accept it, the releasing manager is guaranteed a transition period and goes to the front of the hiring queue for the backfill. A manager cannot block a move, but they are not left short-handed either.

We also added a short shadowing period before the move is finalised, where the employee spends part of their week in the new team while still doing their old job. It gives both sides a chance to find out whether the fit is real before anyone's role changes on paper.

Internal applications went up almost immediately once people saw the first couple of moves actually go through. The less visible effect was on exits. In the year after the change, "no growth here" largely disappeared from exit interviews, and a few people who had been quietly interviewing elsewhere told me they stopped.

When employees want to grow without leaving, I implemented an AI-powered internal talent marketplace that matched people with short-term projects, flexible tasks, and new responsibilities. That change made internal moves fairer by making opportunities visible and matching skills to openings with transparent criteria. Moves became faster and caused fewer gaps because many transitions started as project-based assignments rather than full role changes, keeping teams covered. The marketplace clearly increased internal applications and successful moves by creating clear pathways and lowering barriers to trying new roles.

To promote internal movement without disrupting the work flow of an organization will depend on clearly defining time lines and expectations for length of service. Six months of successful performance in a position is now required before a non-clinical member of our support team may apply for an internal transfer to another area within our organization. In order to make transition as smooth as possible, we require all employees making this move to split their first two weeks at their new job into two parts: they spend their morning hours working out of their new office space and spend their afternoon completing outstanding handoff tasks with their previous department. An important component to successfully moving talented people inside the organization has been the creation of a monthly "Internal Career Spotlight" newsletter that provides information about upcoming openings within the organization. The spotlight also shares success stories from past employees who have successfully moved up or laterally inside the organization.

Internal mobility can only work effectively if employees see the prospect of opportunities without managers having to lose people overnight. I would work towards making everything as transparent as possible. The criteria for roles should be known to all, and the timelines for transitions realistic. One aspect that I would pay special attention to would be the idea of linking internal opportunities to mentoring. A mentor can help employees evaluate opportunities, feel confident, and develop their skills and knowledge.