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It’s not hard to see why managers want to hold onto their best employees. With a strong labor market and often several obstacles within the hiring process, bosses are under pressure to produce results and they need their most talented workers to do that.
But while hoarding talent might be successful for an individual manager over the short term, it hurts companies over the long term. And in fact, managers who champion their employees the most also receive the most internal applications when a job opens up on their team, according to a recent paper from researchers at Cornell and Pennsylvania State University.
Researchers found that supervisors who promoted their team members at higher rates the year prior received around 9% more internal applicants, and around 12% more applications from high-performing employees, compared to managers who didn’t promote as much. Those increases help internal mobility within a company, and help get employees to where their skill sets are most useful, according to the study’s authors.
“When you open up opportunities for people to find different jobs in the organization, it’s super beneficial to the company, because then people move around to where their skills are most valuable,” the paper’s co-author JR Keller, recently told me.
What can companies do to change a culture of talent hoarding? Creating a gig talent market, in which workers can work on projects outside of their team, is a good way to keep employees engaged while still in their current roles, according to Keller. Supervisors should also get together to discuss their direct reports, and different opportunities that employees can pursue within the company.
“Unless you get managers on board [with] supporting their employees and encouraging them and helping them find the roles they should apply for—you can put all the great structures and processes in place, and they’re just not going to deliver quite the level of value that they could,” says Keller.
Read more about the pitfalls of talent hoarding—and how to avoid them—here.
Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion
Around the Table
A round-up of the most important HR headlines.
- U.S. workers quit their jobs 12% less often last year, indicating longer job hunts amid a cooling labor market. —Wall Street Journal
- IBM issued a harsh ultimatum to its remote managers: “move near an office or leave the company.” —Bloomberg
- Small businesses are cutting costs and taking their offices to the suburbs—or fully going remote. —Associated Press
- American Airlines will cut 656 customer support employees in Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth in an effort to consolidate its workforce. —Bloomberg
Watercooler
Everything you need to know from Fortune.
Fitness fiasco. A corporate TikTok commentator slammed a Gen Z worker for missing an 8 a.m. meeting over a workout class—and her criticism opened up a heated discussion on work-life balance. —Orianna Rosa Royle
No complaints. Elon Musk fired an X employee for being “insubordinate” in protesting the company’s RTO orders. X’s lawyer says the dismissal was legal and valid. —John Eidelson, Bloomberg
Not so fast. Oklahoma gave some teachers thousands of dollars in bonuses for taking on necessary jobs—but now it’s asking for the money back. —Sean Murphy, AP
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