UK 
United States
Almost every organisation has had to reconfigure or realign its workforce in some way over the last year. It may have started out as an emergency measure when the crisis first hit, but now more organisations are seeing the value in redeployment over other more costly forms of resourcing.
A 2019 study by Aberdeen found that companies that have best-in-class redeployment strategies realise an 84% improvement in increased revenue per FTE year-on-year, and a 72% improvement in retention and engagement over others.
If you’re looking at how you can promote and manage more effective redeployment, here is a six-step process that will help:
#1: Right person, right place, right time. Successful redeployment can only happen if you have someone available to fill a new or open position, who has the right transferable skills, and who wants to move. In any organisation of more than a few hundred employees, the mechanics of matching skills, career goals and available opportunities is impossible to do manually. Fortunately, tech solutions are widely available to do that. Platforms like our skilling suite can help your employees determine where they can deploy their skills most effectively in your organisation.
#2: Promote skill sets, not tasks. If demand in one part of your organisation has taken a dip and you need to redeploy salespeople, for example, rather than look for other sales roles internally, consider how their skills could be redirected. Their ability to write persuasive emails, make presentations, enthuse about your company and build networks and strong relationships could make them ideal for an internal comms role. Rather than focus internal job postings on functional experience and job tasks, promote the skills required to make the role attractive to a broader cross section of employees.
#3 Create internal networking opportunities. Not every employee who wants to grow and develop in your organisation is outgoing and confident enough to forge their own connections with employees in other teams or departments who are, effectively, strangers. You can facilitate this internal network building by creating opportunities for people from different teams or departments to collaborate. For more information on this, we wrote about three ideas to embed internal networking in a previous post.
#4 Get buy-in from the top down. Redeployment means someone is leaving one role and, potentially, leaving a gap to fill. Understandably, managers may be frustrated that talented team members are leaving their team. What the manager may not have considered is, if that person was ready for a move, they may have left the company all together if they couldn’t move internally – and then the organisation would have lost that institutional knowledge and skills. For redeployment to work across the organisation and at scale, company leaders and managers need to be vocal about the benefits of lateral moves. The alternative is that people become disengaged and consider leaving.
#5: Encourage managers to stay in tune with their employees. Managers can support redeployment by staying in tune with what’s going on in the lives of their employees. By understanding employees’ career paths and future goals, managers can offer to assist when they see suitable openings.
For example, an employee might not be quite ready for a complete redeployment, but there could be opportunities to begin collaborating with another team on a smaller scale. It’s a manager’s job to make it as easy as possible for an employee who wants to try something different. HR can help facilitate this support by providing the redeployment tools and resources managers need to offer help.
#6: Showcase company culture internally
Increase awareness of what different departments and business units do across the company by sharing stories that spotlight the projects and achievements of those teams. Without a window into other business areas, employees may not express an interest in making a move internally, even when a change is desired.
Whether in job descriptions, in company-wide newsletters, internal e-mails, or in all-hands meetings, make it known what each department’s culture is like so people can begin to feel a draw and connection with other people at your company.
If you want to retain employees, it’s always worth having a conversation to see where they see themselves in 3 months, one year, or two years. Their responses might shock you. No matter what they say, try to think about how you can meet them halfway, whether this means moving them into new positions to build their skill set for their future career goals or setting them up on the right path internally to ensure they end up exactly where they want to be without ever having to leave your company.
So, how do you get the redeployment ball rolling? Ideally, all of these steps would happen with all team members, from your leadership team to managers to individual contributors, sharing a mutual understanding that it’s okay to move around, try new things, and develop skill sets within the organisation.
