The power of developing internal talent for hard-to-fill roles

In today’s HR landscape, building career pathways for internal talent is a strategic necessity.

The talent crunch continues to be a focus of HR business leaders — 97% of leaders view attracting talent as a priority in 2024, with 69% of respondents labeling the need as “urgent.”1

It’s already clear that jobs are going unfilled across industries — from registered nurses to software developers, retail salespeople, truck drivers, and beyond — with little relief in sight.

And if you're not currently feeling the talent pinch, you will soon.

Declining fertility rates combined with retiring boomers mean that even over the long term, the talent shortage isn’t going anywhere.

If you want a skilled workforce that can support your business now and in the future, you can’t rely on external hiring. You’ll need to build the talent internally.

Internal talent improves the bottom line and prepares organizations for the future of work.

There’s good news: Investing in your people today doesn’t just help fill critical talent gaps from within — it also fosters loyalty from the employees you help grow into the roles of tomorrow and enhances organizational agility as you proactively build talent with a wider range of skills.

A robust talent pipeline allows companies to address ongoing needs — filling tomorrow’s skill shortages with a workforce ready to meet the company at its point of need.

Doing so also lowers the risk of unfulfilled roles and provides the flexibility to pivot with changing business priorities.

The compounding benefits of leveraging internal candidates

Building career pathways to leverage internal candidates and fill open roles isn't just a strategic necessity to acquire the skills you need — it's a boon to your bottom line and a boost of your employer value proposition.

There is an immense amount of talent that sits within organizations untapped. Companies that combine skilling and mobility efforts to create talent pipelines see a variety of benefits, including:

• Decreased recruitment costs, especially for hard-to-fill roles

• Shorter onboarding timelines

• Improved employee morale and motivation

With the right marketing and systems, internal candidates can more easily find and move into new roles, bringing their institutional knowledge with them to speed the time they offer value in the role.

Investing in career pathways also signals to potential or existing staff that they have a future if they come or stay at the company. This improves retention, engagement, and attraction.

72% of surveyed Guild learners cite career advancement as a motivator to return to school.2

In addition, it creates a more agile workforce that can respond to a dynamic market so that employers can anticipate and address skill shortages in real-time. Organizations can redeploy talent in the face of the potential automation or technology-driven displacement, helping preserve brand value as an employer of choice during such disruption.

Read more details on short- and long-term strategies in our blog post on two ways employers can scale career mobility.

How to start mapping internal talent and building strategic career pathways

To start building talent internally, you first need to identify priority roles for strategic needs. Organizations can start by taking stock of:

• Time it takes to hire for roles

• Cost of talent acquisition

• Demand for the role

• Time and cost to upskill

Once you identify the roles you need to fill, organizations can start looking for talent suitable for hard-to-fill roles.

From a systemic perspective, business leaders should evaluate entry-level roles that can serve as a starting point for the career path to those roles. These can include jobs that tend to have high turnover, high volume, or a good foundation of skills.

For example, a customer support representative can be skilled into another support-oriented role, such as an IT specialist.

Next, map those roles to areas of high need to create a career path. From these starter roles, consider what education and training can build the skills needed for an employee to take the next step on their given career path.

Once the broader channels are found, organizations can also look to talent mapping, skills assessments, and performance reviews to identify potential talent that would be a good fit for new roles.

Don’t miss the hidden potential throughout the workforce — particularly the front line.

Organizations often put resources behind developing “high potential” talent — think management programs, executive coaching, and beyond. Employees are expected to achieve a certain job level or credential before real investment in their development kicks in.

But that approach overlooks the potential that sits within frontline and entry-level roles — or what makes up 70% of the workforce. These individuals stand to benefit greatly from an investment in career pathways, and many are eager to take advantage of talent development opportunities.

Your frontline workforce is your biggest source of untapped talent potential.

For an organization, that’s a population you can’t ignore. Designing career pathways for frontline workers greatly expands your talent pool.

That’s why organizations have to take a holistic approach and intentionally design talent development and career pathways for all.

Employee development programs develop internal talent at scale.

Effectively leveraging internal talent to fill in-demand roles means investing strategically in employee development programs. These programs are the mechanism to help employees build the skills they need and prepare them for the challenging roles.

When structured correctly, employee development programs can also create a culture of continuous learning that enhances organizational agility.

But creating a culture that celebrates growth and mobility is an intentional process. It requires deeply evaluating:

• Current policies

• Skilling programs

• Employee support capabilities

Executing on these three foundational elements will set your organization up for success.

Start by offering employer funded education and skilling programs that mirror your needed talent pipelines — and offer them to all employees. Build a thoughtful awareness campaign that includes high-quality, real-world learnings in both short- and long-form options to allow workers to mobilize into high-demand roles as business needs shift.

Finally, consider offering career support resources — from dedicated coaching to interactive quizzes, resume review, and more. This ensures that even workers with less experience navigating the job search — such as your frontline workforce — have the support they need to grow their careers with confidence.

For more on how best to empower your entire workforce with opportunity, read this article on Guild’s Career Accelerator.

The value of mentorship programs in nurturing talent

Formal company mentorship programs are another crucial element of nurturing talent — especially for employees who might not have grown up with a professional network or who aren’t familiar with the concept of mentorship.

Mentors can help individuals reach their goals faster, overcome challenges, and gain industry-specific knowledge. Working with a mentor can also improve self-confidence and decision-making.

In particular, mentors can:

• Offer guidance and support to take mentees to the next level in their careers

• Help prioritize which skills to learn – and even teach them

• Expand their mentees professional network

• Help in making a career plan and setting goals

Get more details about the importance of mentorship in fostering career mobility by reading our guide.

How to promote internal mobility at scale

Promoting internal mobility at scale takes intentional design and cultural shifts. Organizations need to set up the right structures to enable access and visible pathways, but they also need to celebrate learning and growth.

Create a culture of internal mobility

To start, learning and skill-building can help employees and organizations prepare for an uncertain and volatile future.

Because where change is constant, learning must be constant. Helping employees see how the skills they’re learning and using in their roles today can translate into future roles is a critical part of preparing them for whatever the future may hold. This approach can encourage a learning mindset, rather than viewing learning as just a means to an end.

At the Guild Opportunity Summit 2023, executives from SHRM, Sam's Club, The Walt Disney Company, and Bon Secours Mercy Health gave in-depth examples of how they mobilize talent to create cultures of career opportunity.

After removing barriers to career growth with employer-funded education programs, removing grade and contractual requirements, or — in Disney's case — allowing cast members to study anything they wanted, these companies saw upticks in employee engagement, retention, and overall satisfaction.

Panelists also noted that when employees see other team members succeeding, there is a halo effect that opens up the minds and paves the way for other employees to grow.

It’s a virtuous cycle that helps not only frontline talent see themselves differently, but challenges executives to change the way they think about talent as a whole. They have stopped relying so heavily on hiring external talent and instead are bridging talent acquisition, talent management, and career development to develop strong talent pipelines from within.

Spread the word with transparent communication and intentional program marketing

For organizations to fill pipelines with newly skilled talent, employees have to be aware of the career pathways available to them.

That’s why it’s critical to be transparent in your communications and create intentional marketing strategies around education and skilling programs and the pathways they create — especially for low-wage workers who often have little or no visibility into opportunities to achieve mobility.

Marketing should be:

• Convenient: Meet the employees where they are in the flow of their work (should not be passive websites or webpages)

• Transparent: Be transparent about what steps are needed to obtain each role (including intermediary roles and credentials) and what pay increases might look like

• Future-focused: Tie these new roles and associated learning programs with the future of the strategy of the organization

For more detail on program marketing and structure, read our blog on the three elements of a career mobility framework.

Case studies of the organizations leading the way in leveraging internal talent

With 1.6+ million associates nationwide, Walmart has access to a huge internal talent pool. And in the past few years, they’ve put it to good use. The retail giant partnered with Guild to launch Live Better U, an education benefits program focused on skills that aligned with areas of business priority.

Walmart’s comprehensive program ranges from short form certifications and stackable skilling credentials to degrees. They’ve also developed a myriad of career pathways into health and wellness, cybersecurity, supply chain, technology roles, and more across the business.

“We’re planning to come out of this and not have to compete in the talent war like in years past, but to have our talent pipeline ready and eager to jump into the positions of tomorrow. … When we invest in your associates like this, we see two, almost three times the retention rate, and then the promotability that follows after that is high as well, and so it’s a win - win for our associates and for the business.”

Beth Williams-Moore, Director of Live Better U at Walmart

Bon Secours Mercy Health builds life-saving healthcare talent from within

The healthcare industry is in a talent crisis, and yet staffing facilities is a matter of life and death, as Allan Calogne, Chief People Officer of Core Operations at Bon Secours Mercy Health (BSMH), put it at Guild’s 2023 Opportunity Summit.

To fill talent pipelines, BSMH needed a new solution. So in partnership with Guild, they built priority career pathways to enable existing employees to move into new roles.

You can read more case studies in our article, How 3 HR leaders launched innovative ideas in uncertain times.

Internal talent is your key to the future of work.

Leveraging internal talent with career pathways takes both vision and infrastructure.

But the outcomes are game changing. For companies that invest in an internal mobility strategy, the average employee tenure is 5.4 years versus only 2.9 years at companies with little to no strategy in place.

And as Josh Bersin research has found, the singular most impactful practice for driving business, talent, and innovation outcomes is “creating extensive opportunities for career growth.”