💡Key Takeaway: Internal mobility is the strategic movement of employees across roles within an organisation. It's a competitive advantage that reduces recruitment costs, accelerates time-to-productivity, builds future-ready leaders, and creates the career growth opportunities that keep your best people from walking out the door. The organisations winning the talent war aren't just hiring better, they're developing and redeploying the talent they already have.

This blog will cover:

• A breakdown of what internal mobility means and why it matters more than ever
• The benefits for both employees and organisations - from career growth to cost savings
• Six different mobility pathways, from vertical promotions to strategic lateral moves
• Practical strategies to remove barriers like manager gatekeeping and visibility issues
• Actionable advice on building skills inventories, career conversations, and transition support
• FAQs addressing common concerns about internal moves and career development

Here's a question that should concern every ambitious professional: what happens when you've mastered your role, but the next opportunity feels years away? And here's one that should keep every CEO awake at night: what happens when your best people leave because they can't see their future within your organisation?

The answer to both questions lies in internal mobility - the strategic movement of employees across roles, teams, and functions within an organisation. It's not just about filling job roles or keeping people busy. It's about building future leaders who understand your business from multiple angles, creating adaptive teams that can pivot when markets shift, and retaining talent that would otherwise walk out the door.

Yet despite its importance, internal mobility remains one of the most underutilised strategies in talent management. Many organisations still treat it as an afterthought. It’s something that happens organically, rather than something that requires intentional design and investment.

Let's change that.

What is internal mobility and why does it matter?

Internal mobility refers to employees moving between roles within the same organisation. This can mean lateral moves to different departments, upward promotions, temporary assignments, or even downward shifts that align better with personal goals or work-life balance.

But it's more than just moving people around. At its core, internal mobility is about creating an ecosystem where talent can flow to where it's needed most, where people can grow in multiple directions rather than just up, and where organisations can adapt quickly to changing demands without constantly recruiting externally.

Think of it this way: traditional career paths are like ladders - you go up or you go nowhere. Internal mobility creates a jungle gym instead. You can move sideways to build new skills, climb diagonally to combine expertise areas, or even move down temporarily to pivot into a completely new direction. The destination isn't predetermined; the journey itself becomes the opportunity.

Why does this matter now more than ever? Because the half-life of skills is shrinking rapidly. The skills you hired someone for three years ago might be partially obsolete today. Rather than constantly replacing people, smart organisations are redeploying and reskilling the talent they already have. Which means keeping people who understand the culture, know the systems, and have proven themselves reliable.

What are the benefits of internal mobility?

For employees: growth without jumping ship

Let's be honest: one of the main reasons talented people leave organisations is because they feel stuck. They've learned what they can in their current role, and the next step up isn't available or doesn't interest them. Internal mobility solves this by creating multiple pathways for growth.

Employees gain:

• Diverse skill development: Moving between roles builds a broader skill set than staying in one function. A marketer who spends time in product development becomes a better marketer. An engineer who understands sales becomes a more effective builder.
• Reduced career plateaus: When vertical movement isn't possible, horizontal movement keeps momentum going. You're learning, growing, and adding value in new ways rather than treading water waiting for someone above you to move on.
• Lower-risk career pivots: Want to try something completely different? Internal mobility lets you test a new path without the risk of leaving a stable job. You can explore sales without abandoning your engineering background entirely, or try management without burning bridges in your technical career.
• Stronger internal networks: Moving between teams means building relationships across the organisation. These connections become invaluable for collaboration, problem-solving, and understanding how different parts of the business work together.

For organisations: talent retention and business agility

The business case for internal mobility is compelling. Research consistently shows that filling roles internally is faster, cheaper, and more successful than external hiring. But the benefits go far deeper than cost savings.

Organisations gain:

• Reduced recruitment costs: External hiring is expensive. Think about agency fees, advertising, interview time, and the opportunity cost of leaving roles vacant. Internal moves eliminate most of these costs.
• Faster time-to-productivity: Internal candidates already understand your culture, systems, and ways of working. They can typically become productive in a new role 30-50% faster than external hires.
• Improved retention rates: People who see clear pathways for growth within an organisation are significantly more likely to stay. They're also more engaged, more likely to recommend the company to others, and more willing to go the extra mile.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Employees who've worked in multiple areas become bridges between departments. They understand different perspectives, speak multiple 'organisational languages,' and can facilitate better collaboration.
• Future-ready leadership: The leaders who understand your business best are those who've seen it from multiple angles. Internal mobility creates leaders with broad organisational knowledge, not just deep functional expertise.
• Resilience and adaptability: Organisations with strong internal mobility can respond to change more quickly. Need to pivot strategy? Scale a new initiative? Enter a new market? You can redeploy existing talent rather than scrambling to hire.

What different internal mobility pathways look like

Internal mobility isn't one-size-fits-all. Different career stages, ambitions, and organisational needs call for different types of moves. Here are the main pathways:

Vertical mobility: traditional advancement
This is the classic promotion which means moving up the hierarchy within your function or department. A senior analyst becomes a team leader, a team leader becomes a manager, a manager becomes a director.

Best for: People who excel in their current function and want increased responsibility, leadership opportunities, and strategic influence in their area of expertise.

Lateral mobility: broadening expertise

Moving sideways to a role at a similar level but in a different function, team, or location. A product manager might move into customer success at the same level, or a finance analyst might shift to business operations.

Best for: People who want to diversify their skills, explore new interests, or position themselves for future leadership roles that require broad organisational understanding. 

Diagonal mobility: the hybrid approach

A combination of promotion and function change. You move up in seniority while also moving into a different area. For example, a senior engineer becoming an engineering manager in a new product area, or a sales manager becoming a regional director in a different market.

Best for: High performers ready for increased responsibility who can leverage their expertise in new contexts. Often used to develop general management capabilities.

Project-based mobility: temporary assignments

Short-term moves to special projects, task forces, or strategic initiatives, often while maintaining ties to the original role. Think of secondments, rotational programmes, or project team assignments.

Best for: Testing potential permanent moves, developing specific skills, or bringing expertise to critical projects without permanent organisational changes. Excellent for letting people 'try before they buy' in new areas.

Skills-based mobility: following capability needs

Moves based on transferable skills rather than job titles or departments. As organisations increasingly think in terms of skills rather than roles, this pathway is becoming more common. Someone with strong data analysis skills might move between marketing analytics, finance, and operations as needs arise.

Best for: Organisations undergoing transformation, entering new markets, or building new capabilities quickly. Also valuable for employees with adaptable skill sets who enjoy variety.

Downward mobility: the strategic step back

Yes, this exists and can be incredibly valuable. Someone might move to a lower-level role to change functions entirely, improve work-life balance, or pursue a passion project. A director might become a senior individual contributor to return to hands-on work, or a manager might step back to move into a completely different field.

Best for: Career transitions, lifestyle changes, or moving into fields where you're starting fresh. Requires organisational cultures that don't stigmatise 'stepping back' and recognise that not everyone wants to climb indefinitely.

How companies can get better at internal mobility

Despite its benefits, internal mobility often fails not because of employee disinterest, but because organisations make it unnecessarily difficult. Here's how companies can remove barriers and create genuine pathways for internal movement.

Make opportunities visible

The most common complaint about internal mobility? 'I didn't even know that role existed.' Many organisations post jobs externally instead of sharing them internally to begin with.

What works:

• Create internal job boards: Make them easy to find, searchable, and updated regularly. Include not just current openings but also 'coming soon' opportunities and project-based assignments.
• Share skills-based opportunities: Beyond traditional job postings, advertise project needs, task force positions, and temporary assignments that let people build new capabilities.
• Be transparent about pathways: Show example career journeys within your organisation. Let people see how others have moved laterally, diagonally, or across functions.

Remove the manager gatekeeping problem

Here's an uncomfortable truth: many internal mobility initiatives fail because managers actively block their team members from moving. They worry about losing good people, having to recruit replacements, or looking bad if their team shrinks.

This creates a perverse incentive: be a great employee, and your manager will prevent you from growing. The solution isn't to shame managers, it's to change the incentives.

What works:

• Measure and reward talent development: Include 'team members successfully moved to new roles' as a positive metric in manager performance reviews. Make developing people who get promoted or move a sign of good leadership, not loss
• Create 'open application' policies: Let employees express interest in opportunities without requiring manager approval upfront. Managers should be notified, not asked for permission.
• Provide transition support: Help managers backfill roles quickly. If the barrier to losing team members is the months-long scramble to replace them, provide dedicated recruitment support or access to internal talent pools.
• Make retention about the organisation: Shift the mindset from 'keeping this person on my team' to 'keeping this person at the company.' When someone moves internally, everyone wins.

Invest in skills mapping and career conversations

Many employees don't pursue internal opportunities because they don't know what skills they have, what skills they need, or how to articulate their value in a different context.

What works:

• Create skills inventories: Map out what skills exist across your organisation and what skills each role requires. This helps identify transferable capabilities and skill gaps.
• Make career conversations regular: Don't limit development discussions to annual reviews. Make them quarterly or even monthly. Ask not just 'how are you doing?' but 'where do you want to go?'
• Provide career coaching: Train managers to have meaningful career conversations, or provide access to internal or external career coaches who can help employees map their paths.
• Build internal networking: Create opportunities for people to learn about other departments through lunch-and-learns, shadowing programmes, or cross-functional projects.

Create deliberate pathways and programmes

Don't leave internal mobility to chance. Design specific programmes that make movement easier and more strategic.

What works:

• Rotational programmes: Especially valuable for early-career employees. Let them spend 6-12 months in different departments to build broad organisational knowledge before specialising.
• Leadership development tracks: Create clear pathways for moving into management or senior IC roles, with defined competencies, experiences, and milestones.
• Internal apprenticeships: Allow people to 'apprentice' in new functions for 10-20% of their time before making full transitions. This reduces risk on both sides.
• Mentorship schemes: Connect employees interested in new areas with experienced people in those functions who can provide guidance and insights.
• Returnship programmes: For people who've left the organisation but want to come back, or for those who took career breaks and are re-entering.

How companies are leading the way 

In this section, we’re spotlighting some of the Flexa-verified companies leading the way with their internal mobility initiatives. 

In this section we’re highlighting specific examples of organisations with strong internal mobility programmes, including their approaches, results, and lessons learned. 

TUI 

At TUI, we’re committed to nurturing leadership talent through a range of internal mobility programmes and development initiatives. Our leadership development offering spans all levels, from emerging leaders to executive roles, ensuring a clear pathway for growth. These programmes focus on critical capabilities such as leading through change, inclusive leadership, navigating the evolving landscape of AI, driving performance, and building resilience.

We believe that confident, capable leaders are key to empowering teams and shaping the future of our business. That’s why we also offer a robust mentorship programme, available to all colleagues, to support personal and professional growth through meaningful connections.

In addition, our global look@learning platform provides a diverse array of learning opportunities tailored to individual needs, helping colleagues take ownership of their development and prepare for future leadership roles. Our goal is to help every leader, and their teams, reach their full potential.

“TUI has been instrumental in my leadership journey. They encouraged me to step back into Leadership Development after years in Emerging Talent, recognising the value of my transferable skills and experience. That trust gave me the confidence to embrace new challenges and grow. Over the past 2.5 years, I’ve gained accreditations as a StrengthsFinder and Insights Discovery practitioner deepening my expertise and impact. This experience reflects TUI’s commitment to unlocking potential and creating opportunities that truly transform careers.” 

Rebecca Wakelin, Leadership & Development Manager.

Hurree 

At Hurree, we’ve never believed that leadership follows a straight line. Some of our strongest leaders have grown into their roles naturally, simply by being given trust, freedom, and the right environment to learn. Laura, now our Chief of Staff, started as an EA and carved out her own path into a leadership role through curiosity and initiative. James, who joined us as a design intern, now leads the creative direction of our brand as Chief Design Officer. Both stories reflect what internal mobility really means to us. It’s not about hierarchy, it’s about opportunity, ownership, and organic growth.

“My journey at Hurree has been anything but linear, and that’s what’s made it so rewarding. When I first joined, the idea of becoming Chief of Staff wasn’t even on the radar. The role evolved collaboratively through trust, feedback, and the freedom to experiment. What I’ve learned is that career growth doesn’t have to fit a set template. Sometimes the best opportunities are the ones you shape yourself. My advice to others is simple: look for the gaps no one else is looking at, and don’t be afraid of change. The most meaningful growth often happens when you step into the unknown.”

Laura, Chief of Staff

“When I stepped up into a new role at Hurree, I had one-to-one support and hands-on advice from the team, but what really gave me the confidence to grow was the trust. Being given independence and the space to make my own decisions made me want to take the next step and push myself further. That experience has definitely highlighted skills I didn’t realise I had. I’ve learned that leadership isn’t just about design or software, it’s about people. I feel much more equipped now to work alongside others and help lead them too. My advice to anyone thinking about applying for a new role internally? Why not? Always take the next step, and if it feels tough - fake it ’til you make it. As for mentors, Aaron Gibson has been a huge influence throughout my journey here. His directness, support, and belief in giving people autonomy have shaped

not just how I work, but how I lead.”

James, Chief Design Officer

Vodafone

Vodafone offer a number of pathways to progression. Here Jenny Hayes, Head of Consumer Sales shares more about her experience of the company's future leadership programme.

“My journey from Retail Channel Manager to Head of Consumer Sales has been shaped by incredible support and development opportunities. I was part of a Future Leadership programme that expanded my network across different markets and helped me grow as a leader. I also had access to Ezra coaching, which gave me the tools and confidence to express my ambitions and step into new challenges”

Mott Macdonald
At Mott MacDonald, we believe that career development isn’t just about moving up - t’s about moving forward. Internal mobility is a cornerstone of our talent strategy, giving employees the opportunity to explore new roles, expand their skills, and grow into leadership positions. By creating clear pathways and removing barriers, we empower our people to take charge of their careers while strengthening our leadership pipeline. These are some of the initiatives we have launched to support internal mobility.

• Enabling Managers Programme: Enabling Managers is our flagship development programme for new people managers. Delivered entirely virtually, we have developed an innovative and highly pragmatic learning solution which is focussed on your individual needs as a busy people manager.
• The Coach Approach to People Management: The Coach Approach to People Management programme, follows on from Enabling Managers, and is for experienced people managers who are already applying the core strengths of listening skilfully, agreeing clear expectations and providing meaningful feedback.
• Women in Leadership Programme: Women in Leadership is a development programme designed with a focus on individuals who are seeking to further their careers and realise their potential, overcoming obstacles both perceived and practical. 
• Emerging Leaders programme: Emerging Leaders is an in depth 2 year programme, aiming to identify and develop leadership talent in the business, who demonstrate the potential, readiness, and aspiration to reach a senior leadership position. 
• Aspire Programme: Launching January 2026, Aspire is a 12-month pilot designed to accelerate the progression of ethnically diverse colleagues at grades D–E across EUNA who aspire to leadership roles.

“Motts has been really supportive from a growth point of view. I started off as a programme office coordinator - essentially an administrative role - but showed an interest in the project management side of things and was encouraged to take on an assistant project manager role. Motts paid for me to do the training and exam for the Association for Project Management's Project Management Qualification, and I was able to grow in my project role because of this. I then had some mentoring sessions with one of our commercial directors, who recognised my strengths in terms of degree background (Law) and my analytical skills and created a new role for me in his commercial management team. This turned out to be an ideal fit for my mindset and I have promoted twice in just over three years. The sense of curiosity has never left me and thankfully my senior colleagues are very receptive to offers to take on workstreams, to develop training that helps teams deliver work underpinned by commercial excellence, or to run with ideas for business improvement; these are again beginning to open up potential development opportunities and I am looking forward to continued growth.”
Julia Barr, Principal Commercial Manager

OVO

At OVO we have implemented a comprehensive, multi-faceted strategy for internal mobility and leadership development designed to build capabilities from within. The initiatives shared below focus on personalised planning, skills development through experience and training, and continuous coaching.

• Personalised growth and career mapping: We ensure every individual has a clear pathway and tailored support to reach leadership roles. This includes personal development plans (PDPs), career pathway mapping and performance and potential Alignment tools that align current outcomes with an employee's potential, allowing us to focus development conversations and resources to gain the most impact.
• Targeted skill building and confidence: We have a big emphasis on experiential learning to build practical leadership skills and confidence. This includes experiential projects, external training and quarterly focus sessions on core leadership topics like accountability, ownership, and 'how we turn up'. 
• Continuous coaching and reviews: Our framework includes regular checkpoints to ensure sustained growth and necessary course correction. This includes regular 121 sessions, reflection and self-assessments and regular calibration / review and alignment, allowing us to tweak inputs as needed to support individuals. 

We spoke to OVO leaders and employees to gain insight into our career progression success.

“My greatest enjoyment as a leader is watching my team grow. There is a saying I was told when I was a very immature leader which as a group of words has left me, though the sentiment was essentially if you stand still, the ability of your team to grow stands still too and people will hit their ceiling very quickly.

I believe being relentless in prioritising your own self development is key in any leader and I role model this by ensuring I prioritise my own learning and playback of my growth too for understanding but also feedback from my team who can help shape that growth too.”

Mark McGill - Customer Care Group Lead 

“My company has supported my growth into new roles and leadership opportunities by giving me both the space and the encouragement to step outside my comfort zone. I’ve been trusted with initiatives that stretched my skills, exposed me to new areas of the business, and required me to collaborate with teams across functions, especially post merger. That trust has been paired with constructive guidance from leaders and peers who were willing to share context, coaches often offer feedback, and champion my development.”
Drew Bowditch - Serve Pod, Delivery Lead