Internal mobility is supposed to be the cheap way to fill senior roles, and most employees have already given up on it. A new SHL survey of 2,036 workers in the US and UK found that 66% believe they have to leave their employer to advance their career. The same people are remarkably willing to prove themselves: 89% said they would complete a formal skills assessment, and 83% would retrain for a more senior role.

So the people are ready. The question is why the companies aren't.

What the survey found

SHL published the results on October 15, and HR Dive covered them on October 20. Propeller Insights ran the fieldwork in June and July, splitting the sample almost evenly between the two countries.

The headline is the 66%, but the detail is more useful. Only 42% of workers said their managers fully understand their skills beyond their current role. Among people who feel underused, 20% said their manager doesn't even know those skills exist. And 31% pointed to a blunter barrier: managers who don't want to lose people from their team.

The company side looks similar. 59% of US workers and 49% of UK workers said their employer favors external candidates over developing people internally. Meanwhile 84% want their employer to show them internal opportunities that match their skills, and nearly 80% said career advancement makes them more engaged at work.

Lucy Beaumont, SHL's global SVP of product and design, summed up the mismatch: "Employees are saying, 'assess me, develop me, show me where I could go next'. Yet organizations continue to invest time and money searching the external market for individuals with skills and experience that they may already have."

Why the path stays invisible

It is tempting to read this as companies not caring about their people. In a company of a few hundred, the cause is usually more ordinary. Nobody ever wrote the path down.

Ask an engineer, a support lead or an account manager what they need to do to reach the next level, and the honest answer in many companies is "ask your manager." The manager has a rough idea, formed by who got promoted last year and why. That idea differs from the manager in the next team. The employee can't see either version, so the promotion feels like a negotiation, and negotiations are easier to win with an outside offer in hand.

The second cause is that the manager sees one slice of the person. They know how someone handles the job they were hired for. They usually don't know that the same person ran a volunteer program, taught themselves SQL, or has been quietly mentoring two new hires. Those skills come up when someone outside the team works with them, or not at all.

The third cause is the one the survey names directly. A manager who loses their best analyst to another department has a hole to fill and nothing to show for it. Without a rule that internal moves are expected and supported, the rational move for that manager is to keep quiet about the analyst's ambitions.

What to change before the next promotion cycle

None of this needs a talent marketplace or a new platform. It needs three things written down and one habit.

Publish what each level requires. For each role family, describe in plain sentences what a person at each level does. Not "demonstrates ownership" but "plans their own work for the quarter and flags risks before the deadline." Make it visible to everyone, not just managers. Once the bar is written, the employee can check themselves against it, and "what do I need for the next level" becomes a list instead of a guess.

Let people assess themselves first. The survey's most hopeful number is the 89% willing to be assessed. Use it. Ask employees to mark which requirements they already meet, then have the manager mark theirs alongside. The places where the two disagree are exactly the conversations that should happen and usually don't. This also surfaces the skills the manager didn't know about, because the employee is the one bringing the evidence.

Get input from outside the team. A 360 review that includes peers from other teams shows skills the manager never sees. If three people from product rate someone a 4 out of 5 on stakeholder communication, that is a data point for a move into a product-facing role. Our guide to 360 reviews people don't dread covers how to set one up without turning it into a paperwork week.

Make career goals part of one-on-ones. The habit is simple: once a quarter, the one-on-one includes the question "where do you want to be in a year, and what is the next step?" Write the answer down as a goal with a check-in date. A year later you have a record of who wanted what, and whether the company helped.

There is also a policy piece for leadership. If 31% of people see managers blocking internal moves, managers need a reason not to. Some companies count successful internal moves out of a team as a positive in the manager's own review. Others simply require that open roles are posted internally for two weeks before going outside. Either works better than hoping managers act against their own short-term interest.

The counterintuitive part

You might expect that showing people the path makes them leave faster, because now they know exactly what they're missing. The survey suggests the opposite. The people most likely to leave are the ones who can't see a path at all. A visible gap with a plan to close it is a reason to stay. An invisible one is a reason to update the resume.

We wrote earlier about the skills visibility gap, where HR knows which skills the company needs but not who has them. This survey is the employee side of the same problem. The people with the skills are telling you, and asking to be tested. The missing piece is a place where the answer is recorded and someone acts on it.

Where DTPulse fits

In DTPulse, the grades matrix lays out competencies by level for each role family, with each requirement written as a sentence. Employees see their own matrix, mark what they already meet, and see the manager's mark next to theirs. Each person has a current grade and a target grade, so the next step is explicit. 360 reviews collect ratings per competency on a 1 to 5 scale from the manager, peers and the employee, with written comments, so skills seen outside the team are part of the record. Goals track career steps by period, and one-on-ones keep the agenda and action items next to the employee's profile.

That won't fill a senior role on its own. It does mean that when one opens, you can look at who is already close to the bar before you call a recruiter.

This week, pick one role family and ask three people in it a single question: what would you need to do to get promoted here? If the three answers don't match, write the real answer down and share it. That one page will do more for internal mobility than any program you announce.