{"id":61478,"date":"2021-04-07T23:12:55","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T23:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/explore.local\/2021\/04\/07\/five-strategies-to-job-mobility\/"},"modified":"2025-04-04T19:46:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T19:46:00","slug":"five-strategies-to-job-mobility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/degreed.com\/experience\/de\/blog\/five-strategies-to-job-mobility\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Five Workforce Mobility Strategies for 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s not just one right way to implement a job mobility strategy at your organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But depending on the needs and culture of your company, one approach may prove more effective than another, according to a new report<\/a> by RedThread Research and Degreed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether you call it job mobility, internal mobility, or career mobility, It makes sense to connect your people\u2019s skill development with growth opportunities<\/a>. A successful job mobility strategy keeps your workforce engaged and competitive. It aligns opportunities with the needs of your business, to ensure your company is growing along with your people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s right for your organization? To help provide some clarity, RedThread researchers surveyed 70 leaders from 17 companies, noting: \u201cWhile we found similarities between approaches, no two orgs are handling career mobility in exactly the same way \u2014 or for the same reasons.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Five Job Mobility Strategies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The study identifies distinct patterns or standard job mobility frameworks. Understanding how these are defined, and how each supports a certain type of organization and culture can help you figure out which might be best for your company. This is true if you\u2019re just getting started or looking to tweak your existing strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Before we break down each of these further, it\u2019s important to note that a hybrid strategy is common. Usually this means that a majority of the people at an organization uses one approach and a subset uses a secondary approach. Only rarely does an organization exclusively lean on only one strategy; the new study found no examples of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ladder: An Emphasis on Permanent Roles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In this, people move from one full-time role to another. Generally, they move vertically within a silo or function. For example, a graphic designer becomes an associate creative director. Or a sales representative becomes a regional sales manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This works best if permanent roles are the main way your company organizes its people, if there are well-defined career paths that aren\u2019t highly flexible, or when people don\u2019t have a high degree of ownership over their career paths or job mobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lattice: An Agile Mindset<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

People move up, around, and sometimes down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This too works best if permanent roles are the primary way a company organizes its people. But what makes this different from the Ladder approach is that it\u2019s most successful when people have a high degree of ownership over their career paths. That\u2019s only possible when your company culture embraces an agile mindset in which people try out new roles in new functions or business units. For example, a customer service representative joins Marketing to become a customer references manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agency: Skills and Flexibility <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

People move around based on their skills and preferences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach works best when your people have a high degree of ownership over their careers and come together in teams or other flexible arrangements to get work done. For example, a team disbands at the end of a project and another forms for a new initiative, similar to the way a creative agency functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside In: Specialized Help<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

People with certain skills are brought in to support specific projects. This requires understanding your people\u2019s skills and how to strategically deploy them to get work done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach does not provide workers with much ability to define their careers within the context of a single employer organization. More often, they work with several organizations. For example, a database manager on contract spends a month helping two nonprofit organizations clean up their records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reset: Moves to Meet Needs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

People are strategically reskilled and redeployed into new roles based on strategic needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the time, workers are first identified for new roles, which they can accept or reject. But that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean they can choose a different one. For example, a communications company reskills its retail store workers in response to COVID-19, moving them to the call center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Relationship Between Ownership and Skills<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How are the five approaches similar? And what is each best suited for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are key questions leaders pursuing a job mobility strategy tend to ask. To help answer them, the researchers plotted each of the five approaches to job mobility on an X-Y axis. In doing so, they considered who owns career mobility and the relationship between career mobility and skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resulting graph looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The graph illustrates noteworthy occurrences that can guide the creation of a job mobility program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the study:<\/p>\n\n\n\n