Having good talent leave even with great pay and a good culture is very frustrating, and unfortunately, it’s happening everywhere. Over half of employees either looking for a new job or keeping an eye out for openings, and it’s becoming harder than ever to tell if your team is drained.
The uncomfortable truth is that many companies think of workforce planning as a numbers exercise when it’s really about moving people into new roles, letting them stretch, and making them feel they have a future where they are. When you ignore that, you pay in ways that don’t always show up in your dashboards until the damage is done.
This blog will explore the hidden costs you’re paying when you skip talent mobility in your workforce planning, and what that’s costing your company every single day.
Why ignoring talent mobility drains workforce planning budgets
When people leave, it’s rarely because of one bad day or a single disagreement, and most likely because they can’t see what is next for them, and if your business doesn’t show it, someone else will. They take their experience and context with them, and you’re left with the cost of finding, hiring, and training a replacement who will need months to get up to speed.
Consequently, replacing one person can cost anywhere from half to twice their annual salary, depending on how specialised the role is. Now think about how often it happens across your teams. Every exit is money lost, momentum slowed, and workforce planning forced into reactive mode, all because there was no clear path for people to grow without leaving.
Workforce planning slows down without talent mobility
Market needs change fast, and where one moment you needed sales pros, the next might have you needing a data analyst to help refine your strategy. If workforce planning means opening a new request each time, you’re in for a slow ride. Hiring takes weeks, sometimes months, and then there’s onboarding before the person adds value.
What if the skill you needed was already inside your company? Maybe someone in operations has been learning data visualization in their spare time. Maybe someone in support wants to take on a sales enablement role. If there is no way to move these people, then you might end up burning resources on external hires while underutilizing what you already have.
Considering your talent in your workforce planning pivots you fast enough to fill roles in days instead of months, while building loyalty by giving people the growth they’re craving.
The cost of disengagement in workforce planning
Disengagement is sneaky. It shows up as people doing just enough, missing small deadlines, or not pushing ideas forward. It’s easy to chalk it up to a motivation problem, but often it’s a mobility problem. If people feel stuck, they lose energy for the work in front of them, and your workforce planning suffers in silence.
Gallup has estimated that disengaged employees cost around 18% of their salary in lost productivity, and while that seems small, think about it across a team of ten, and you’ll find that you’re paying for one full-time employee to do nothing.
Giving people opportunities to grow allows them to move, learn, and bring back their energy. Mobility isn’t just about filling roles but also about giving your people a reason to care deeply about the work they’re doing now because they see it as part of a future they want.
Workforce planning should use the talent you already have
Your people are growing all the time, even if it’s not in their current job description. They take online courses, learn new tools, or develop soft skills that could help in other areas of the business. If your workforce planning isn’t tracking and using these skills, you’re wasting a resource you’ve already paid for.
Imagine needing someone who understands workflow automation, and it turns out one of your support reps has already built another process to help their team. If your workforce planning doesn’t surface this, you’ll post a job, spend weeks hiring, and pay for a skill you already have.
Talent mobility within your workforce planning helps you capture these skills, reduce external hiring costs, and keep your best people from leaving to use the skills they’ve developed elsewhere.
Making talent mobility part of workforce planning
If you want your workforce planning to be effective, you can’t ignore mobility. You don’t need a huge system overhaul to start:
1. Start tracking your team’s skills and aspirations, not just their current roles.
2. Train managers to encourage movement rather than block it.
3. Build clear paths for people to explore roles across departments.
4. Use lightweight talent platforms or even internal job boards to match people to needs quickly.
When mobility becomes part of workforce planning, you gain flexibility, lower your hiring costs, and create a culture where people see your company as a place to build a long-term career.
Final thoughts…
Ignoring talent in your workforce planning doesn’t just cost you money, but also growth, energy, and employee turnover, and instead of staying ahead, you’re constantly drawn back to struggling.
Considering talent mobility in workforce planning helps you move faster, save money, and build retained teams who see a future for themselves. So if you want your workforce planning to be a true competitive advantage, mobility can’t be optional anymore.
Want to see how you can transform your workforce planning and make talent mobility work for your business? Book a free consultation with us today, and let’s build a workforce strategy that works for you and your people.
