‘He has put down his papers’ – You know this right away when, all of a sudden, you see your HR and leadership team are having an hour long meeting with that top performer first thing in the morning!

Hard truth is that his manager has not yet realized that it is already too late for him to influence the employee to change his mind. Because it has reached a point to where the leadership team and HR have to be involved to convince that employee to stay. Believe me, at this point employee might have already decided in his mind on when to leave.

And it is of  little use how much you talk or negotiate or offer to pay a higher salary.

We, HR, see this scene all the time and wonder why we did not see that coming.

[Tweet “Internal Mobility – the key to talent retention”]

Most often we think that we can buy an employee’ stay by offering him a better compensation or benefits. But what the employee values can be something more than a mere paycheck. And that could be to pursue his career advancement opportunities.

Recruit from within for Talent Retention

HR often assumes that internal growth opportunities within the organization are well known to the employees but in reality it is not. As per LinkedIn’s survey the top most reasons that would compel an employee to change employers is “Greater opportunities for advancement” and second reason is better leadership from senior management and only then compensation matters.

Here are two reasons that HR has to know why employee quit.

Employee quits, not aware of career advancement within the organization.

Instead of waiting to promote an employee till he has made up his mind to quit, take a proactive step to let your employees know of the career advancement opportunities within  the organisation. Because most employees quit without being aware of that opportunity to advance to the next role within the organization. Let the managers be the first to notify the employee when a position opens. And be sure to use all medium like internal referrals, intranet, social media platforms etc to promote the awareness of internal mobility within the organization.

Employee quits knowing that his organization values an outside hire over him.

An employee needs to know that the organization cares about their people and values their career growth within the organization. But instead if you choose an external hire over him then you will lose his trust and loyalty. He would think that he is not valued. In spite of having the right skills, experience and potential to advance to the next role he was not considered for that position.

You know the cost of losing a high performer, who already knows the culture of the organization. And you know the cost of hiring a new employee with all the operational costs and where culture fit is an uncertainty. It is time to work on your internal mobility to retain the best talent within the organization.