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Internal mobility is when an employee moves to a new job while staying at the same company. And while it’s an increasingly common practice — growing by about 30% over the past few years — it’s still a frustratingly informal process at most companies. 

Just 33% of organizations offer formal internal mobility programs, and only one in five employees is confident in their ability to make an internal move, according to LinkedIn Learning’s 2024 Workplace Learning Report. 

“It was easier to leave and get rehired, than to find a job within the company,” said Jean Pelletier, Schneider Electric’s VP of digital talent transformation and global talent acquisition. That led Schneider to successfully transform their internal hiring process — but most organizations still lag far behind them. 

Why should talent leaders care? New LinkedIn data reveals that the companies that lead on internal mobility can expect a bevy of benefits: more leadership development, longer employee tenure, and greater learner engagement.

Read on for a closer look at upsides of internal mobility, along with practical tips to improve internal hiring within your own organization.

Nearly twice as many leadership promotions

While internal mobility can include lateral job moves, it’s also highly correlated with promotions into leadership. 

Compared to those on the low end of the spectrum, companies with highest internal mobility rates saw 79% more leadership promotions on a per-employee basis. Consider it a virtuous cycle: When landing a new job internally is normalized, it’s easier to find and develop new leaders. 

Investing in internal mobility programs can help you build a healthy pipeline of leaders equipped with invaluable institutional knowledge — unlike the external candidates you’d otherwise have to hire. 

Over 50% longer employee tenures 

Previous LinkedIn data highlighted that employees who make internal moves are 40% more likely to stay at the company for at least three years (retention). 

Today’s recent findings add another layer, showing that at companies with high internal mobility, employees tend to have 53% longer tenures overall compared with those at companies with low internal mobility. That means that fostering internal opportunities may not only boost short-term retention, but also contributes to longer overall tenure. Employees are more inclined to stay within an organization where they see pathways for growth and new roles, extending their career lifespan and deepening their loyalty.

If a skilled worker knows they can step into a new role without stepping out of your organization, they’re way more likely to stick around. 

Greater focus on upskilling

“Businesses need new skills at a rate faster than I’ve ever seen before,” said Jennifer Shappley, LinkedIn’s VP of talent, in the most recent Global Talent Trends report. “[That] means they need to help their employees evolve via upskilling and internal mobility.”

Today’s data confirms that the two go hand-in-hand: Organizations with high internal mobility saw 17% greater learner engagement, measured as the average number of hours spent developing skills on LinkedIn Learning. 

Upskilling will be an increasingly vital tool, especially for companies that find they can’t hire external candidates with the right skills — whether there aren’t enough candidates or their asking price is too high. 

“In years past, companies might have relied more on talent acquisition to ‘buy’ the new skills they needed,” Jennifer said, “but that strategy no longer works in isolation for today’s labor market and business environment.”

Final thoughts

So, now you know that internal mobility is linked to all sorts of strong benefits — but what can you actually do to improve it at your company?

A comprehensive transformation like Schneider’s typically has to be led from the top, as managers fearful of losing their talent will often resist or discourage internal mobility. Learn more about how companies like Comcast, Amazon, and Pfizer achieved similar transformations with intentional policies and programs.

That advice might work well for talent leaders with the influence to instill such policies and programs — but what if you’re just a single recruiter without the power to introduce sweeping operational changes? 

You can still make a meaningful impact. Only 38% of recruiters even search for internal candidates on LinkedIn; that simple tactic can make you stand out, surfacing existing employees that others might overlook.

Whether your role is big or small, you can move the needle to make it easier for employees to land a new role — without having to leave your company. 

Methodology

We categorized companies into deciles based on their internal mobility rates and compared outcomes for companies in the 10th decile (highest internal mobility) vs. the 1st decile (lowest internal mobility). 

Internal mobility: All data reflects aggregated LinkedIn member activity as of April 2024. We’ve defined internal mobility as any point at which an employee took a new position at the same company in the last 12 months ending April 2024. To calculate internal mobility rates, we included only companies with at least 100 transitions and calculated the median rate.  

We considered the median tenure (in years) by company for all current employees. Number of manager or higher promotions divided by the total average headcount at that company in the last 12 months. We factored out companies with fewer than five total promotions. We calculated median hours per learner of LinkedIn Learning content watched by enterprise users at each company in the last 12 months. To mitigate outlier companies with few learners and high learning hours (and therefore disproportionately high hours per learner), we filtered for at least 25 learners in the company.

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