Fuel50 Talent Mobility Anne Fulton FuelX

New State of Play 2021: Internal Talent Mobility

It is hard to find anyone who would disagree that the world has changed dramatically since March 2020.

But despite the difficult and dramatic changes we have all endured, many organizations discovered something else — great resilience, according to Anne Fulton, Fuel50 founder, and CEO, speaking at the FuelX Talent Mobility Conference (see it here).

Here is how Anne put it:

“It’s incredible when we look back on what we actually learned in 2020. This last year really proves to us that when faced with an unprecedented crisis. organizations and their workers are capable of tremendous resilience … They can adapt and they can pivot, and I think we all should be proud of what has been achieved over the last 12 months. And we really need to stop and acknowledge that our resilience increases as we recognize the magnitude of what we already accomplished …  when it comes to workforce agility. And I think there’s some more amazing positivity to come.”

Anne introduces the “New Talent Economy”, which emerged during the global pandemic as companies found themselves needing to dramatically change their talent management practices so they could better cope with the disruptions that were shaking up their organizations with the incredible workforce agility that was being demanded of all.

5 keys to the New Talent Economy

So, what is driving the New Talent Economy? Anne listed five critical elements:

  1. Workforce demographics are changing the makeup of talent everywhere.
  2. Technology drivers such as automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and other technological changes.
  3. The social justice imperative that is pushing organizations to be more transparent, inclusive, fair, and to do better for their people.
  4. New work models and new work structures we are all having to grapple with, and,
  5. Modern forms of work mobility have shown us that we can access talent anywhere.

As Anne shared:

“Historically, roles have been defining our succession and workforce planning. But today, we need to think more agilely and creatively around how skills will determine the capabilities of the future. Some 40% of employees have said they frequently complete tasks outside of their job description, proving that roles have been ill-designed to capture the skills required for today’s workflows. So now we need to think more agilely around skills, talents, and capabilities, and how they are defining the new work models going forward.”

Transforming the talent experience

Internal talent mobility is one of the most important of those new work strategies and Anne Fulton shared this talent experience transformation roadmap in her presentation.

Internal talent mobility can dramatically transform the talent experience in your organization, as Fuel50 has learned from working with more than 75 leading businesses and organizations around the globe. What we found is that there are a number of benefits that flow from an Internal Talent Mobility Model, including:

  • Reduced costs — It can cost 6 times less to build talent internally than to hire externally.
  • Increased efficiency — Nearly 9 out of 10 employers agree that an internal mobility program would help their productivity goals.
  • Improved retention — It is more cost-efficient and more effective to build skills from within.
  • Attracting more talent — Some 87% of employers say that an internal mobility program helps attract better talent overall.

Those are all great benefits for any organization, but how do you get there? Well, as Fuel50 has found, the key to a great Internal Talent Mobility strategy is a first-class Talent Marketplace, and as Anne Fulton described it:

“The way we conceptualize it is that a Talent Marketplace is the agile redeployment of your workforce, where we match your people, based on their talents and skills, to jobs and projects, to gigs, to vacancies, to roles.”

But more than that, we are also able to create … an Opportunity Marketplace, which is really around the imperative for workforce reskilling. In an opportunity marketplace, we do everything a Talent Marketplace offers, but we also connect an employee to strategic learning journeys, to strategic careers, opportunities, mentors, learnings, …  so, it really is around that growth and reskilling imperative for your people.”

Agility, flexibility, and resilience are crucial

In fact, Anne Fulton put it best when she said, “When we look back on what we learned in 2020 when faced with an unprecedented crisis, organizations and their workers are capable of incredible resilience under pressure – we can adapt and pivot – and we should all be proud of our tremendous ability to be agile.”

Being agile, flexible, and resilient is crucial for organizational success as we move ahead — and Anne Fulton’s FuelX presentation is a quick way to get yourself up to speed on what you need to do to make it happen.

We shared the latest best practices in Internal Talent Mobility and Talent Marketplaces, and to get full access to how to super-charge their talent management system for the post-pandemic world, you really need to listen to the opening FuelX address here because it is a brief overview and talent transformation experience roadmap on the important things that ALL organizations need to do to enhance workforce agility.

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