Leveraging Internal Mobility With Technology And Branding

Welcome to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the simple and AI-powered rewards and recognition platform for employee engagement.

Before we dive into our conversation today, let's picture a situation. Imagine you have worked with a company for a few years now and you love the culture, your co-workers, and the work that you do. But lately you have realized that you want to try something new and accept a new task or responsibility. This is where the role of internal mobility comes into play. The transfer of people within an organization to other positions, departments, or locations is called internal mobility. It's becoming a very popular trend in modern workplaces today, as businesses now appreciate the value of retaining bright talent and providing possibilities for growth and development.

Hello listeners and welcome to the Vantage Influencers Podcast. We're going to explore a wide range of HR topics and ideas that are sure to captivate and inspire you. I'm your host, Susmita, and to bring us brilliant insights into internal mobility, its potential, and its bond with technology and branding, I'm so glad to welcome Prithveesh MM, the Associate Director, Global Talent Acquisition at Biocon Biologics. Welcome to the show, Prithveesh.

Prithveesh MM: Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

Susmita Sarma: Yeah, so delighted to have you here today, Prithveesh. Would you like to tell us about yourself, your corporate background, and what led you to join the healthcare industry, transforming healthcare and transforming lives with Biocon Biologics?

Prithveesh MM: Absolutely. So I'm born and raised in Bangalore, I've lived all my life here except for the time that I was away for a few years. I did all my education here in commerce and later an MBA in HR and marketing. I joined a company straight out of campus, and as part of my professional journey, my first role was to lead a talent acquisition role, largely responsible for campus hiring for the South of India. I also did a brief stint in the lateral hiring space. Post that, I internally moved as an HR business partner, supporting one of our banking and financial services customers. Later on, I again moved internally to a corporate HR role, where I was largely looking at programs like careers, internal mobility, performance management, mentoring, and leadership development.

After this, I moved to the US. I was based in Cincinnati, and later New Jersey, where I had the opportunity to manage HR regionally in Ohio for a large workforce, and later moved into a technology leadership role in talent acquisition, where I was largely responsible for growing and staffing entry-level talent and looking at strategic programs within the talent acquisition space. After that I moved back to India, spent a brief time again with the same company, managing HR for one of our business units, and very recently joined Biocon Biologics as a global talent acquisition leader, responsible for the campus hiring strategy, relationships with key universities, enabling functions hiring, demand management and supply planning, and the internal mobility program.

What drove me to this industry is, very clearly, the kind of people I work with today, an extremely inspiring and knowledgeable set of people, and being in a position where you're able to work with a company that's truly envisioning itself to be a global leader in biologics, delivering affordable access to innovative and inclusive healthcare solutions and transforming patient lives. As of today, if you look at the last one year of data, we've served 5.5 million patients globally, and that's something very remarkable and purposeful for me in my life.

Susmita Sarma: Brilliant. I must say, firstly, you have a very brilliant career graph, and secondly, now that you're with Biocon Biologics, it's definitely an excellent opportunity to work with some of the best minds in research, healthcare, biotechnology, and commercial sectors. So I'm sure you have a talented and diverse staff working towards the shared goal of making healthcare inexpensive and accessible globally. Would you like to tell us more about your work, and we'd also love to know about your team?

Prithveesh MM: Oh yeah. I would say we have a very young and vibrant talent acquisition team. I think most of us have joined in the last one year, coming in from different companies, and we're truly coming together with a lot of collaborative ideas from our previous experiences to build Biocon Biologics, from a staffing and talent acquisition and HR perspective, into a really strong organization that can deliver very strong value as we accelerate our business growth in the next few years.

Susmita Sarma: Right, so coming to today's topic, Prithveesh, internal mobility. Talent scarcity has become a major issue in recent years, and companies have been seeking ways to embrace internal mobility as a solution. But this time it's happening from a different angle altogether. As we all know, a global pandemic struck the world, making overall recruiting processes extremely difficult, and as a result, the notion of internal mobility emerged as an opportunity for all. We'll get into that later, but first, would you like to define internal mobility for our audience?

Prithveesh MM: Sure, I think this is something very close to my heart. In simple terms, it's all about the movement of employees within your organization or your group, either organically or inorganically. It can happen through job rotations or swaps, lateral and vertical moves, deputation to overseas locations, localizations, and progressions that enable career development, growing talent in-house, promoting key talent, and building your next line of leadership. I can't say this enough, the program can bring out a future leader, a future senior, a future CXO of the organization, and that is the impact of internal mobility as a program.

Susmita Sarma: Right, so thousands of individuals work for large corporations across countries, industries, and roles. However, it's not uncommon for recruiters to be entirely unaware that the perfect candidate may already be working inside the organization. So that raises the question, why do so many organizations overlook their greatest source of talent, their already existing employees?

Prithveesh MM: I want to sound more positive and optimistic here. If you look at it, forward-looking companies have already been doing exceptionally well in their internal mobility programs for many years now. What has happened over the last two to three years in the pandemic wave is that the program has got amplified, and there's more branding around it, because companies have gone back to their roots and asked, why do we need to hire so many people from outside, can we not look at internal talent? And from an employee perspective, people wanted to know how they could be more secure and grow within, so they started looking more inward than outward, and the program gained more visibility.

But to your specific question, I can only say that companies probably did not give enough focus to data around internal talent, and may not have had the right organization design structures or a construct that showed scientifically drawn career paths. That's probably why it's so important, today and going forward, to have a very robust talent strategy, a robust workforce management lens and action plan, and strong data linkages, linkages to skills, role, experience, learning, career aspirations, and performance, all tied together. I think that makes for a very strong system where you're able to look at and evaluate internal talent more than external talent.

Susmita Sarma: So do you see organizations moving more into internal mobility nowadays, or are they still looking for new candidates?

Prithveesh MM: If you look at mature organizations, ones that have already spent five or ten years in their lifespan, these are the companies that have very strong internal mobility programs, because they've already hired the external talent and capability they needed in their initial years, and now they're growing people within. But if you look at a startup sort of system, that's where you see a lot of external talent being hired. Though today there are also smart, creative companies that, even as soon as they're in the startup ecosystem, are promoting internal growth, trying to build leaders quickly, and giving people that visibility and capability so they're not losing out on their internal talent. So in short, yes, I think most companies today are heavily looking at their own mobility programs.

Susmita Sarma: Rightly so, it fits that employees also benefit from learning new skills and moving into areas they're passionate about, which has a beneficial impact on how the company performs. But is internal mobility always a win-win situation, or do you see some drawbacks?

Prithveesh MM: Very honestly speaking, if companies are trying to force-fit employees into roles, or into higher roles, in the name of talent mobility, then they're not realizing their potential to grow as an organization, and they're essentially losing out on people. It goes back to how diverse and inclusive your company's workforce is, and whether it shows that intent, promises it, and delivers on growing people. As long as you're able to do that, from your values statement through to delivery, then every case of internal movement becomes a win-win, and eventually the program can run almost on autopilot.

To give a little more context, there are two methods for how internal mobility can happen. One is the conventional method, an internal job posting program, where all the jobs are posted, internal employees apply, go through an evaluation, and then get confirmed into the role. The second is a more inorganic approach, where forward-looking companies today look at methodologies around role maturity, span of control, career aspirations, and performance rankings, and encourage a culture of movement by nudging people through leadership and various communication channels. Technology is also helping this today, which I'll talk about a little later, and all of this is really helping the program move toward a win-win rather than burning bridges along the way.

Susmita Sarma: Also, I think Prithveesh, promotions and intra-departmental and inter-departmental transfers are examples of internal mobility as well.

Prithveesh MM: Absolutely, yes, definitely.

Susmita Sarma: Okay, so moving on, Prithveesh, we'd love to know some of the ways of improving internal mobility, and especially how companies can be more technically sound and build a strong employer brand to help fuel it.

Prithveesh MM: I think I just touched on this in the last question, the internal job posting program, which runs on an almost autopilot method currently, and a lot of companies have done this for many years and grown talent through it. I think it's time companies leverage and harness the technology available today, through different products, platforms, and solutions, where employees can be intelligently matched to opportunities they can excel at. Those opportunities can range from a part-time project or gig, where you come in, do some work, get rewarded for it, and then move back to your job, to rotations, learning, mentorship, or full-time roles. Meanwhile, companies gain full visibility into their workforce and are able to fill roles faster while promoting a culture of recognition and progression.

My own message as an HR leader is: don't become talent holders. Let go of talent, and that message is for managers across the board. When you see good talent, build them, but at some point let them go, because they have to grow, move up the value chain, and become leaders for tomorrow. In that context, there are products in the market that use machine learning algorithms or predictive intelligence to match individuals with new roles based on skill sets, working styles, goals, interests, aspirations, and ambitions. Through such platforms, employees are able to create their own custom pathways and build their dream career within the existing company.

So what you're essentially doing is not telling an employee what they need to do with their career, which used to happen years back, but enabling them to define and build their own careers within the organization they work with. For that, it has to be rooted in your culture, your communication has to be seamless, streamlined, and transparent, and technology, as I mentioned, will amplify that push toward the platform where they can go and excel. What you're also doing is enabling employees to deconstruct their own skills and understand what they're specialized in, whether they want to go deep and specialize in one area, or diversify and become a people manager, a leader, or move into different functions altogether. All of this helps them think ahead about what they need to do at different junctures in their career, and helps the organization build a pipeline of leaders, experts, and the product and design thinking it needs.

Susmita Sarma: So, to summarize, culture, communication, the use of better technology, and employee upskilling and reskilling are some of the key factors organizations should consider for a strong internal mobility program.

Prithveesh MM: Yeah, yeah.

Susmita Sarma: Thank you, Prithveesh, for sharing your experience and knowledge with us today. Our listeners may have some additional questions and want to follow your work, so please let us know how they can contact you.

Prithveesh MM: Oh well, I think most of us are available on LinkedIn as a professional connect, so I'm available there. You can find me as Prithveesh MM, happy to connect with like-minded people willing to share ideas. I also work with a lot of students in academia, talking about what I'm learning and how I can learn back from academia. So please connect, I'm looking forward to some meaningful conversations.

Susmita Sarma: Yes, we hope to have you back for another episode to discuss this further, Prithveesh, but for today it's time to wrap up. So once again, thank you for all your advice on how companies can become more technically sound and establish a great employer brand to help promote internal mobility. It was an honor to speak with you, thank you once again.

Prithveesh MM: Thank you very much for the opportunity, it's a topic very close to my heart, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about it.

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