Internal Mobility And The Hoarding Manager

Talent hoarding is a manager's practice of keeping a strong employee on the team by discouraging, delaying or blocking a move elsewhere in the organisation.

It is common because managers are rewarded for their own team's results.

It is treatable because the fixes sit in the release rules and in who carries the cost of cover.

The HR business partner's job is to change those two things and to hold the conversation with the manager who is blocking a specific move.

In a working paper by the economist Ingrid Haegele, 75 per cent of managers at a manufacturer with more than 200,000 employees reported hoarding talent.

The remaining evidence comes from the same paper unless stated otherwise.

Why Managers Hoard Talent

Hoarding follows from how managers are measured.

A manager who releases a strong person carries the vacancy, the recruitment and the ramp-up, while their own delivery is judged this quarter.

The benefit goes to another function and to the organisation.

Managers at the manufacturer described the conflict directly.

Fifty-five per cent agreed that developing people creates a conflict of interest, because developed people are more likely to leave the team.

Only 36 per cent believed their effect on people's development was valued as much as their effect on team performance.

Hoarding was more frequent where the incentive was stronger, meaning performance-related pay, larger teams and more visible talent.

Any remedy that leaves that arithmetic alone is an appeal to good behaviour.

What Hoarding Looks Like

A manager seldom says no.

The behaviours are quieter, and they recur across the sources Haegele cites.

• Never recommending the person for a role in another department

• Keeping the person off task forces and cross-function committees

• Rating the person's potential for larger roles below what the manager privately believes

• Threatening people who try to leave the team

• Withholding career planning and high-visibility training

In a survey of employees at the manufacturer, 41 per cent said they were afraid to apply for internal roles because of what the manager might do.

Twenty-five per cent felt they needed permission before applying, and 16 per cent said applying away from the team was seen as disloyal.

What Hoarding Costs

The cost falls on the internal applicant pool, and it falls hardest on the strongest people.

Haegele used the moment a manager learned of their own move to another team as a natural test.

While the manager had no reason to hoard, applications from their staff rose by 78 per cent.

Those extra applicants were hired 49 per cent of the time, against an average of 28 per cent, so many of the deterred applications would have succeeded.

Employees who reported being hoarded were 30 per cent more likely to have searched for jobs outside the firm.

An exit after a blocked move is often recorded as a career decision, and the organisation loses the person, the knowledge and the replacement cost while the manager loses nothing.

Measuring Hoarding By Manager

Internal movement is measurable, and most organisations do not measure it by manager.

• Internal movement rate, by manager and by level

• Applications from a team, and how many progressed

• Regretted exits within six months of a blocked move

• Time in role beyond the stated expectation

The third converts a cultural complaint into a cost.

A manager whose team produces three regretted exits after blocked applications has cost more than the vacancy they avoided.

Haegele measured hoarding through the gap between what managers said privately about a person's talent and what they recorded publicly.

Where an organisation holds both a rating recorded in the system and the view a manager gives in a talent review, the gap by manager is worth reading.

A practitioner can take three numbers to the executive team.

1. The proportion of roles filled internally, by level

2. The share of internal applications that progress past the first stage

3. Regretted exits following a blocked move

Rule Changes That Work

Exhortation does not work here, and four changes to the rules do.

• A bounded release decision. A manager may hold a release for a stated period, commonly four to twelve weeks, and the date is recorded, so an indefinite no becomes a scheduling conversation

• Cover funded by the organisation. Where a release creates a gap, the organisation pays for an interim, an overlap or an agreed cut in what the team delivers

• Release in the manager's objectives. People developed and released are reported next to delivery, and a manager with a strong record is visibly advantaged at their own promotion

• A defined disclosure stage. The policy states when the manager learns of an application, so both parties know

The second change follows the evidence most directly.

Managers at the manufacturer were asked what would make them support career moves.

Only a minority cited financial incentives, and 68 per cent named the ease of replacing the person they lost.

Haegele also names a cost.

Policies that make internal moves easier could discourage managers from investing in people they may lose.

That is a reason to pair the bounded release with cover and with credit in the objectives.