Career Management and Internal Mobility: Why Do They Still Come Last on the HR Agenda?
- Jean-Baptiste Audrerie
- Aug 23
- 8 min read
Updated: Sep 5
Career management and internal mobility remain undervalued and are the last to be implemented in an HRIS. We explain why HR struggles to deliver these programs and scale them to personalize the employee experience, despite strong demand from candidates and employees for talent management.
Career management and Mobility: Always Last!
In a context where 75% of employees do not expect to stay in the same role for more than five years and the average length of employment is capped at 4.1 years, career management and internal mobility paradoxically represent one of the most neglected challenges of modern organizations.
Although these issues are systematically included in the strategic priorities of human resources departments, they too often remain the "fifth wheel of the carriage" of technological and organizational investments.
During our analyses of HR technology needs to modernize the HR service offer and the employee experience, HR teams mention that they want to implement a career and internal mobility management module. The goal is to retain employees and thus reduce the costs of recruitment, onboarding, and skills development. But relaunching the internal elevator is a wish that falls by the wayside. The path to implementing a multifunctional HRIS solution and then a career management module is long and arduous. Those who expressed the need upstream are often no longer there to deploy it 2 or 3 years later.
Faced with this observation, we questioned the causes of this difficulty in achieving a goal whose benefits address many challenges of accelerated skills development and employee aspirations.
The Great Divide Between Expectations and Organizational Reality
Recent studies reveal a gaping gap between employee expectations and organizational capabilities. According to 2024 data, 54.8% of candidates say they are satisfied with their current job, but a third of new employees leave their position after only six months. This early turnover is largely explained by the absence of clear development prospects and structured career paths.
Today's employees place opportunities for advancement and professional development among their top priorities, just after work-life balance and fair compensation. However, the majority of SMEs and even large groups struggle to offer technological and organizational solutions that meet these legitimate aspirations.
The Five Systemic Roadblocks to Career and Mobility Management in SMEs and Large Enterprises.
1. The Managerial Retention Reflex.
Internal mobility suffers from a managerial paradox: managers hold on to their "A-players" as rare assets, creating a system that rewards hoarding rather than internal talent sharing.
According to LinkedIn, only 33% of organizations have a structured internal mobility program, and only one in five employees feels able to move internally.
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This managerial resistance is quantified: up to 46% of managers actively oppose internal mobility, fearing to see their best elements leave their team (Source: Deloitte 2019).
This defensive retention is costly: recruiting externally is 18-20% more expensive and doubles the risk of early departure.
2. Lack of Time and Generic Programs, Due to a Failure to Scale Career Personalization
Time is the number one obstacle to professional development. According to the Gallup survey (July 2025), 89% of CHROs, 37% of managers, and 41% of employees report not having a minute to train. This lack of time fuels disengagement, which already represents $1.9 trillion in lost productivity in the United States, according to Gallup.
The "One-Size-Fits-All" approach to skills development aggravates the problem: only 23% of American employees believe that their career development is truly aligned with their personal professional project, and barely 43% consider that their company encourages them to develop internally. As long as training remains an "extra" disconnected from the daily workflow, its return on investment will remain theoretical.
The Gallup study also indicates another troubling fact: while employees value technical, on-the-job training, HR continues to spend effort and budget on leadership development, which remains an issue in itself, but which shows a gap in attention.
3. The Great Divide Between an Employer Promise and Reality
The alignment between the employer value proposition (EVP) and the lived experience is a major challenge. According to Renascence, companies whose internal culture contradicts their brand promise have a first-year turnover rate that is three times higher. Conversely, the culture/EVP alignment increases the propensity of employees to become ambassadors by 5.2 times.
This problem is aggravated by the rigid hierarchy: the pyramidal structure mechanically limits the possibilities of vertical evolution, while the suppression of middle management positions further reduces the prospects for classic progression. It becomes impossible to "PR" a bad experience in the era of digital transparency.
4. The Short-Sighted View of Learning Value
Less than 5% of re/up-skilling programs reach a measurement phase, according to the LinkedIn Learning Report 2024, while organizations with a strong learning culture benefit from +57% retention, +23% internal mobility, and +8% managerial promotions.
This myopia is accompanied by a glaring lack of visibility on internal talent: many organizations admit to using LinkedIn to map the skills of their own employees, for lack of relevant internal tools.
However, according to another Gallup study (July 2025), organizations that invest in personalized paths see a 14% increase in job satisfaction and 19% in productivity, as well as a 40% reduction in turnover.
Better yet, still according to the LinkedIn Learning Report, in 2024, indicated in its report on workplace learning, that companies with a strong learning culture have a 7% higher promotion rate to management level, a 23% higher internal mobility rate, and a 57% higher retention rate than those where learning is less robust.
5. The Lag in Adopting Technological Solutions for Career Management and Internal Mobility
AI-driven Internal Talent Marketplace platforms remain marginal, even though they have demonstrated their ability to boost internal mobility by 30% and drastically reduce turnover at leaders like Unilever, Schneider Electric, or IBM.
Unilever also reports that its internal marketplace has reduced external recruitment costs and generated more than $10 million in productivity gains. Schneider Electric fills 47% of its internal positions via this platform. IBM has improved matching rates by 40%. This is what we learn from the Dialogue Review article of June 2025.
Their slow diffusion is explained by high costs, cultural resistance, and a lack of internal expertise. These platforms require HR and HRIS resources and quality data to move to the individualization stage. Recurring investments are necessary to maintain the relevance of recommendation algorithms and internal mobility from the Stone Age.
The successful implementation of advanced technologies such as Talent Marketplaces or intelligent career paths requires an organizational maturity that few companies possess. Absorbed by the challenges of digitizing human capital management and managing a multi-layered ecosystem that is becoming more complex.
This maturity is based on fundamental processes: structured job management, operational skills management, automation of HR movements, functional self-service, established internal recruitment, succession identification, continuous skills assessment, and transparent mobility and career progression policies.
Without these foundations, even advanced technologies lack the quality data necessary for AI recommendations. It is only with this solid base that an organization can benefit from features such as personalized job suggestions, horizontal mobility, lateral movements, temporary internal replacements, and the practice of "shadowing".
Technological debt is holding career management and internal mobility back in the Stone Age
The successful implementation of advanced technologies such as Talent Marketplaces or intelligent career paths requires an organizational maturity that few companies possess, absorbed by the challenges of digitizing human capital management and managing an increasingly complex multi-layered ecosystem.
This maturity is based on fundamental processes: structured job management, operational skills management, automation of HR movements, functional self-service, established internal recruitment, succession planning, continuous skills assessment, and transparent mobility policies.
Without these foundations, even advanced technologies lack the quality data needed for AI recommendations. Only with this solid foundation can an organization benefit from features such as personalized job suggestions, horizontal mobility, lateral moves, temporary internal replacements, and shadowing.
The Impacts of a Non-Existent or Opaque Offer
The absence or opacity of career and mobility opportunities generates considerable hidden costs for organizations. Beyond employee turnover, which represents a direct cost estimated at between 50% and 200% of a position's annual salary depending on its complexity, organizations also suffer major indirect losses: employee disengagement, lower productivity, deterioration of the employer brand, and the flight of talent to the competition.
This talent drain deprives the company of its institutional memory and critical skills, creating a vicious cycle of costly external recruitment and loss of know-how.
Gaining Maturity or Losing Talent
Leaders like Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, and Oracle HCM offer sophisticated solutions that transform the employee experience in mature organizations.
Workday HCM Talent Market Place is highly focused on HR analytics and has several algorithmic engines (ML) for training, coaching, and career recommendations.
SAP SuccessFactors relies on AI to enhance talent mobility.
Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM avec Oracle Grow offers a complete suite of human capital management to manage careers and mobility.
Dayforce Career Explorer has oriented its skills management offer by putting the employee at the center to visualize their acquired skills and those to be developed according to their career target.
Specialized solutions are revolutionizing the approach:
EightFold AI with its talent intelligence offers several training content recommendation engines and a talent marketplace.
Gloat is the pioneer of "Internal Talent Marketplaces" allowing employees to discover career paths and job opportunities and the gaps with the targeted position.
Fuel50 is known for accessible mobility for medium-sized and large-sized organizations.
Phenom specializes in talent acquisition with matching algorithms and suggestions for skills and development and training activities.
Other solutions, such as Intelligent Skills Platforms, provide individual dashboards to manage careers, development, and internal mobility. ➡️ Download our free Smart Skills Management Solutions Map here.
These platforms offer AI-based development suggestions, intelligent career paths, assisted internal mobility, and predictive analytics. Their success depends entirely on the maturity of the underlying processes:
well-structured job architecture,
skills architecture by job,
recruitment based on skills,
training based on skills,
quality of employee profile data,
conversations about skills to be developed, career prospects, and individual aspirations,
and finally, open and transparent policies for movement and career progression.
Towards Personalized Talent Management
To transform career and mobility management from a theoretical objective into a real competitive advantage, organizations must adopt a progressive and methodical approach.
This transformation begins with an honest audit of their current maturity, followed by a development plan for fundamental capabilities before investing in advanced technologies.
Companies that succeed in this transformation do not just acquire tools, but cultivate a culture of continuous learning and professional development. They invest in training their HR teams, develop strategic partnerships with technology Vendors, and above all, constantly measure the impact of their initiatives. Organizations that prioritize career development and internal mobility will find figures to support their business case and boost their ROI:
This is how career management and mobility cease to be the fifth wheel of the HR carriage to become the engine of a sustainable and profitable organizational transformation.
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