Picture the scene – a key member of your senior team has
resigned and the situation can’t be turned round and you know you must replace
– the dilemma is whether to “play it safe” and go with an internal promotion candidate
or look externally.
In simple terms, internal promotion can be seen to encourage
loyalty, build morale and send out a powerful message about career development
prospects – assuming, of course, that the internal candidate has the rights
sills and competences – but the drawback surrounds the missed opportunities of
bringing someone new into the business.
Many companies are adept at creating internal pipelines of
talent recognising the need to retain good people to give business continuity.
And these businesses strive to offer people a career with vision of where their
career may go within the company instead of having to leave to move upwards.
Furthermore, the creation of continuous development opportunities for internal
teams to ensure that home grown talent is always available sends out a strong
and powerful message.
Some companies always promote from within first only
bringing in new people at junior level. By doing this, they tend to have good
retention at lower and middle levels and keep recruitment costs low. This tends
to mean that people can rise from junior ranks fairly quickly before
progression slows due to a mix of limited opportunities or their inability to
progress any further.
Succession planning runs through the talent management process
from recruitment to how employee performance is managed and building a culture
of internal promotion makes a difference to an organisation and gives people
aspirations. However, it is critical at this point that expectations are
managed and also when an internal candidate is unsuccessful for a role, they
deserve honest feedback so that they are able to re-evaluate their aspirations
and re-set their goals based on reality.
However, it is acknowledged that if the business is
venturing into new markets or sectors, the likelihood is that the required
skill set will not be available internally. Also, playing devil’s advocate
there is a high amount of benefit to be gained by bringing in a fresh set of
eyes with best practice knowledge and skills gained elsewhere. Rightly so, much
is written to-day about the value of transferable skills and skills can
transfer successfully between industries, sectors, markets and functions.
Whilst it could be perceived that external recruitment
stifles the development of internal staff by cutting off potential promotion
avenues, the counter argument is that promoting internal talent prevents the
opportunity to inject fresh ideas into the business. Conversely, recruiting a
manager from outside the business may mean that talent is unearthed in the
business that the previous management structure had failed to identify or chose
to overlook and new management gives these people new opportunities.
New blood into an organisation, specifically at senior
level, brings new ideas, innovation, creativity, and different ways of working.
It rarely comes without pain because it will also ruffle feathers, challenge
the status quo, ask pertinent questions and shake people out of their comfort
zone by getting people to up their game.
Business growth can also be a factor in the internal v
external recruitment debate. Some employees are ideally suited to smaller
businesses (invariably these are family based) and as the business grows and
possibly the family influence begins to take a back seat, there is greater need
for formalised management structures, process, procedure, controls and
disciplines. Quite frankly, some people will find the growth transition
uncomfortable and in simple terms, the business out grows the individual and a
new/different skill set is required to drive the growth.
In these situations, bringing someone new to the table will
bring much needed new ideas, freshness, energy and vision whilst challenging those
that say “but we’ve always done it this way”.
If it comes down to cost, on paper external recruitment will
cost more and external recruits will need to be given an on-boarding process to
familiarise them with the business. However, over time the right candidate will
be able to make a significant contribution and make a step change for the
business through new methods of working, accountability and the identification
of new opportunities.
Every business needs to manage the balance between internal
and external recruitment but at senior level, sometimes it takes an outsider to
come in and shake the tree.
Written by Adrian Berwick.
Adrian is an experienced HR Professional who works exclusively with Macallam on the delivery of their Personal Career Transition Service
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