Visibility Into Opportunities

Think about the feeling you had when you last received a job offer. It’s an incredibly validating feeling to be wanted, and when a company makes that clear with a job opportunity, it is thrilling. That wave of excitement can ebb and flow over time but imagine if we could recreate that feeling with our employees on a periodic basis. That’s a part of the promise of career mobility: making that person feel desired all over again with opportunities to move and grow within the business. In the study, 73% of employees indicated interest in learning about new roles inside their organizations. There are a variety of factors that we’ll tease out in this report that can impact that number, but overall it’s encouraging to think that three out of every four workers want to explore opportunities at their current company.

They look to their employer first, which gives us an advantage that we often fail to recognize. Traditionally this type of transaction began as a conversation between that person and their manager, but increasingly companies are using technology as an experience layer for workers to explore and understand other opportunities inside the organization. However, that experience can vary widely depending on the company, culture, manager, and tools available to the workforce. One in five employees in the study told us that despite their interest, they don’t have visibility into career opportunities at their company, which creates inequities and disengagement. That’s not a guess: research has found that employees who don’t have visibility into internal career opportunities are nearly three times more likely to say they wouldn’t be interested in other jobs at the company. Perhaps even more concerning, women were 50% more likely than men to say they do not have visibility into career opportunities inside their company.

If someone doesn’t have visibility into the opportunities within the business, they are definitely less likely to be interested, and they’re also a lot more unsure how they feel about internal opportunities overall. Humans aren’t afraid of change: we’re afraid of the unknown. If we don’t know what opportunities might exist for career advancement and growth, we’re more likely to be uncertain and hesitant overall. The good news is that interest isn’t set in stone. Those employees who have visibility into career opportunities are much more likely to be interested in them.