How Quadient Reinvented Employee Development with a Talent Marketplace
One modern key to employee satisfaction is internal mobility. If employees are succeeding in their roles and ready to grow, why wouldn’t a company want to nurture them through that process? Instead of being forced to find success elsewhere, employees should be able to capitalize on internal mobility opportunities at their current company, nurturing skills and relationships needed to thrive.
Shelia Gray, Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Quadient, a technology company based in Paris, France, knew from the beginning that her company needed a better internal mobility plan: “When I joined the organization in late 2019, we were siloed. We had four applicant tracking systems. We didn't have an internal mobility strategy, but we seemed to have a lot of engaged employees around the world.”
How could they ensure those employees remained invested?
Watch the full session below for her answer, or read on for tips Gray and her team learned from this process.
Solving Multiple Pain Points With One Solution
The emergence of the pandemic accelerated Quadient’s planned flexible workforce strategy and created an opportunity for them to begin their “epic hiring journey.” “If we were going to grow as an organization, we needed to take advantage of all of the various channels of talent that we could,” Gray explained.
First, they shifted focus to external talent in the marketplace. Collapsing their four ATS systems into one allowed them to have “one face to the market in terms of our employment value proposition.” But that wasn’t enough. When it comes to recruiting, “Most organizations don’t think about internal talent and the internal employee experience [as a place to find candidates]”, Gray explained.
So, she posed a question to the organization: “If employees are really our greatest asset, what are we doing to develop them, retain them, and make them interested in the value that Quadient provides?”
Related Case Study: How Kuehne+Nagel Empowers Employees To Own & Grow Their Careers
Already a Talent Experience Management customer, Gray and her team leaned into Phenom’s robust Employee Experience capabilities, including next-level internal mobility that makes open roles and learning opportunities more transparent, personalized, and actionable. According to Gray, it was the perfect opportunity for them to advocate their brand while also encouraging employees to discover how to enhance their professional development.
Top Tips For Reinventing Employee Development
As Gray walked through her team’s own journey keeping top talent invested, developing, and satisfied, she offered these five tips:
Tip 1 — Consider change management first
“Think about the change management that goes along with creating this focus on your internal employees,” Gray said. Over the years, she has observed that organizations spend large amounts of time and money on the attraction of external candidates. That means internal candidates are less likely to have a unique experience. “We decided that we were going to consider both equally important and invest as much time and energy into both.”
Tip 2 — Think of managers and leaders as coaches
“When [employees] think about someone leaving their team who they've invested in, it's not always positive… it can be thought of as betrayal,” Gray explained. But Gray is a firm believer that internal mobility is often a testament to good coaching and mentorship by managers and team leaders. Instilling this mindset among all team members can level-set expectations about employee growth. “If we're going to lose someone, let's lose them to us,” she reasoned.
Tip 3 — Be deliberate about the experience you’re creating for employees
Gray and her team invested research into how their employees looked at jobs and how frequently internal recruiters communicated with them. Gray emphasized that recruiters should think about “the attitude you create with your internal workforce.”
Whether it’s sending personalized emails, conducting phone screens, or offering a conversational chatbot that guides employees through finding their next role, consider how different proactive communications affect your employee experience and internal engagement.
Related: Newell Brands’ Plan for a Red Carpet Employee Experience
Tip 4 — Leverage tech to minimize manual processes
When it came to internal recruitment, “We were putting things on our intranet and sending out emails within groups about job opportunities, but we had no visibility from one group to another or one region to another,” Gray explained.
Now with Phenom, Quadient has an internal talent marketplace where employees are able to easily identify open roles and opportunities for job progression based on their goals and company needs. At the same time, Quadient recruiters can proactively tap into their own workforce to fill current or future headcount.
The AI powering the platform remembers employee info and allows them to connect with other employees who may be on the same career journey. In addition, it conveniently links to Quadient’s LMS — making it easy to find personalized recommended training courses based on an employee’s desired career path.
A conversational chatbot also guides internal talent through finding their next role, signing up for company events, and making referrals.
Tip 5 — Brand your internal talent marketplace
Gray and her team wanted their internal talent marketplace to be an immersive experience employees would actually use. Branded as Quadient’s “Career Hub”, employees have a known dedicated place to go for everything they need to get where they want to go next. Hiring managers can also utilize the space to streamline key information regarding roles, responsibilities, tools, and more.
Most important to Gray? The customized experience every employee receives, right down to the language they speak: “We were able to do things in different languages, which is very personalized,” she noted.
Measuring Internal Mobility Success
What does measurable success look like for internal mobility…especially in the early phase? To start, Gray set a 20% adoption rate of the Career Hub among employees. In less than three months, they achieved a 45% adoption rate, far exceeding their goal — while also recognizing that a portion of their workforce in manufacturing and distribution wouldn’t interact with it in the same way as knowledge workers.
Despite this success, Gray isn’t finished. “We keep edging our goal out further,” she said. Employee satisfaction is always the number one priority in the back of her mind, and so far, pulse surveys have revealed very positive feedback.
“We have a need. We want to invest. And we want to make sure that our [internal] candidate experience makes people want to tell people about our jobs.”
Must-Read Resource: The Definitive Guide to Employee Experience
3 Questions to Ask Before You Start
Now that Gray and her team have been on this journey for over a year, they encourage others experiencing internal mobility transformations to consider the following three questions:
1. What should success look like?
2. How do you get adoption?
3. How do you make your internal application experience feel special?
By choosing to invest in actionable internal mobility that’s also part of a unified talent experience platform, Quadient is empowering their employees to shape their own career growth and stick around for the long haul.
See how Phenom Employee Experience makes internal mobility transparent, actionable, and trackable
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