How This Retailer Increased Employee Retention With an Intelligent Talent Marketplace

The Challenge

This consumer goods leader values digital innovation and operational excellence as they strive to be an amazing workplace for their 29,000 employees to learn, develop, and thrive. So, when they had the chance to completely overhaul their internal employee experience, they seized the opportunity — building a transparent, growth-centric talent marketplace with all the trimmings.

Like many companies, the enterprise originally invested in their external candidate experience and used their ATS as a makeshift internal job board for employees. The problem? The entire experience paled in comparison — and their internal application numbers proved it.

“It was really more of a ‘data dump’ than a place to find internal opportunities,” admitted their director of North America Talent Acquisition & Operations. “As an internal employee, you could only see simple job listings,” she said. “There was no search capability and job alerts were completely inaccurate. Sometimes our employees wouldn’t even receive them. In fact, it was so hard for our internals to apply that they’d usually just give up altogether,” she shared. “We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for employees to see what roles are available to them so that they can have those discussions with their managers and take action.”

Adding to the challenge, the company didn’t have any means to source internally. Instead, hiring managers would come directly to the TA team asking for best-fit employees for a new role — but it was impossible for her to sort through 29,000 employees. “I wanted to grant hiring managers the ability to perform an internal search at the click of a button, finding exactly who they’re looking for,” she said.

Her primary goals echoed those of many leaders across talent acquisition and management:

• Increase internal sourcing and hires

• Foster internal mobility and career development

• Support ways of working and wellness

The Solution

Already a thriving Phenom customer, the company didn’t hesitate to use the same Intelligent Talent Experience technology that fueled their first-class candidate and recruiter experiences for their cross-functional internal employee experience transformation.

“Based on our success on the external side with Phenom, it was an easy choice. I wanted to take what we did externally and give our employees an even better experience,” she said.

Key Phenom Employee Experience products — most notably Phenom Talent Marketplace — offered exactly what she was looking for:

• Personalized job search & recommendations

• Quick and seamless apply process

• AI-driven skills matching & job alerts

• Enhanced referrals

• Transparent employee resource groups (ERGs)

The most important element of this new experience? Crystal-clear transparency. “We want to encourage employees to move business units if they’re burnt out or looking for a new challenge,” she explained. “We want to keep them and make that transition as easy as possible.”

Although she and the company’s C-suite knew its value, getting their global workforce to adopt a new tool raised a potential challenge. “We hired 3,500 people in the past year and a half. All those people are asking the same question: ‘Why would I sign up for internal mobility?’ You have to let them know they’re not just scrolling through new positions. It’s so much more,” she noted.

To show employees the value at their fingertips, the team leaned heavily on Phenom Campaigns to automate communication on educational materials. In addition, they continuously leveraged recruitment marketing campaigns to spotlight hot jobs and jobs that need referrals. “It’s a great supplement for our recruiters and keeps our internals engaged in different ways,” she shared.

With Phenom Referrals, employees can now easily share open job opportunities with their networks by linking directly to the company’s career site or posting on social media. Not only can they easily track their own referrals, but the TA team can, too. “Being able to see in real time how many candidates employees refer — and for which positions — drives more accurate planning to fill roles faster with higher quality talent,” she said. Another measurement it illuminates? Employee engagement.

Based on years of employee feedback, another priority was simplifying how people find, join, and engage in the company’s diverse employee resource groups. With Phenom Employee Resource Groups, the signup process is a simple, one-stop shop. On the back-end, managers can easily create content with the Phenom CMS and add events to better connect members, both virtually and in person. The ability to send relevant email and text campaigns promoting upcoming events facilitates better participation, as do convenient calendar integrations to organize schedules and set reminders.

The Results

Armed with data, the team can see that their internal talent marketplace and improved employee experience is working.

“We’ve absolutely seen an increase in internal moves and decrease in time to fill — and that’s huge,” she shared. Instead of taking 45 days on average to search for an external candidate, recruiters are filling positions in just 5 days with a qualified employee.

“Back when I was a recruiter, if I had 30 positions, I would maybe get one internal applicant. In just one month, we’ve had almost 400 internal applies. That’s a 129% increase, which is amazing for us.”

She has also seen internal mobility success firsthand: “I had someone move over from the talent management team to my recruiting team right after being alerted of the opening through our internal site,” she revealed. “Our employees are using it, finding roles, and making a move. It’s energizing and impactful to see.”

In three months, the company gained 565 new employee signups, which means even more employees are poised to take advantage of the internal opportunities available. In addition, 349 employees were referred and employee retention increased to 73.3% despite the challenging talent landscape.

• Increased employee retention

  Investing in their employees’ growth and internal mobility kept more workers satisfied and loyal.

• Increased Referrals

  A simple, streamlined process to refer internal and external candidates filled pipelines with vetted talent.

• Increased internal applicants 129%

  By more than doubling their number of internal applies, they filled roles faster with higher quality talent.

• Decreased time to fill 89%

  Instead of taking 45 days to search for an external candidate, recruiters filled positions in just 5 days with a qualified employee.