Mobilising Talent: How Secondments Benefit Individuals and Organisations  | Article

Organisations are increasingly looking for ways to improve and share learning, enhance and develop perspectives, and increase employee motivation. One way to advance these agenda items is by increasing talent mobilisation, or the transfer of employees from one position to another whether within or outside of their organisation. Secondments offer a way to enable individuals to access an on-the-job learning opportunity for the benefit of both the employees themselves and the wider organisation.  

Talent mobility via secondments offers exposure to new and improved technological and organisational processes, operational understanding and knowledge, digital and cultural transformation and much more. Below are some ways that individuals and organisations benefit from secondments:

Improve technical understanding of key subject matter expertise, such as technology utilisation and changed outcomes.  
The movement between sectors is arguably more important than ever, as leaders across sectors face new advances in technology, changing landscapes for example with AI and all the benefits and challenges it brings, coupled with an ever-changing talent market. This means gaining instant access to a talent pool with access to key and emerging skills is harder than ever. Furthermore, a changing workforce, a workplace that relies on agility to thrive, a focus on diversity and inclusion, and a constant need to innovate and learn new skills to stay ahead of the pace of change all further emphasise the need for organisations to curate a workforce with different backgrounds.  

Seconding into an organisation that has expertise in these areas can help the secondee develop new insights and skills that help when facing these common challenges within their home organisation. Similarly, an expert who takes part in a secondment can help bring new skills into their host organisation 

Understand a different sector’s key drivers and their effect on the organisation’s decision-making process.
Each sector has its own values and way of making decisions. Understanding these can help participants reflect upon their own organisation’s processes.  

The Whitehall & Industry Group (WIG) was created to help civil servants understand more about industry and public policy’s effects on business in practice as part of a 1980s Cabinet Office initiative, and for industry to better understand the Civil Service.  Now, that mission remains just as important.  The 2021 Declaration on Government Reform emphasises encouraging porosity so the Civil Service can draw on critical skills from across sectors to fulfil their roles – for example, through secondments. In 2022, the Civil Service reaffirmed their commitment to secondments in their “Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025”.  

Participants leave secondments with learning to bring back and use in their organisation and vice versa. For example, the CEO of Costain said of their recent inwards secondment that “gaining insight into government and how it works has been important to better understand decision making and for taking an objective viewpoint”. 

Learn from other’s processes, operational understanding and knowledge.  
Many organisations and public bodies are at the forefront of what they do, constantly innovating, learning and improving practice and process to great effect. By encouraging individuals to expose themselves to these organisations and learn from them, organisations can implement best practices within their own context without having to start from scratch.  

Understand different workplace cultures and leadership styles.  
Most individuals find it fascinating to see their organisation from the outside, including how processes work, perception versus reality, and a clearer view of stakeholder engagement.  We often find that individuals receive promotions or job changes post their secondment, especially when they are able to share the learning comprehensively in their home organisation.  

Feedback is consistently strong about the benefits for both the individual and the organisation.  A secondee from the FCA noted that she “learnt so much from being in an energetic commercial environment that is experiencing and responding to significant changes”, and we often see Fast Streamers highlighting their leadership development due to reduced hierarchies in smaller charities. 

Indeed, when we monitor the results of the secondments in the Charity Next Programme that we run in partnership with the Fast Stream, the results are notable, with 92% of participants feeling that they have brought a fresh perspective into the organisation, and 81% of participants reporting bringing the outside perspective on the government back when they returned to life in the Civil Service.  

Conclusion 
Talent mobilisation continues to greatly benefit both the individual and the organisation, but organisations’ desire, facilitation and implementation of these schemes and interventions still vary enormously, with those that are evangelical about it to those who have yet to dip their toe in the water. 

When organisations allow their employees to go on secondments, employees win by having an on-the-job development experience that they would not otherwise have had the opportunity to take on within their own organisation, and the organisation benefits by increased employee retention and knowledge of key processes that can be applied within the home organisation. 

At WIG, we help to convene these opportunities for the benefit of both the organisation, and the individual, whether it be through Organisational Raids where organisations learn first-hand how to approach a particular organisational challenge, Charity Next, where talented future Civil Service leaders second into not-for-profit organisations to create personal learning opportunities, whilst helping the not-for-profit organisation in its development, or a traditional (or non-traditional) secondment or work-shadowing opportunity. 

Facilitating diverse experiences is key to WIG’s mission to bring people from across the sectors together to develop mutual co-operation, understanding and learning. Gaining understanding of different contexts leads to stronger leaders with enhanced career paths and stronger outcomes. This leads to better business, better government and better society.  

WIG’s talent team is happy to have any conversations about how secondments can help your career or your organisation to enhance their talent development suite.   

WIG offers a suite of talent and leadership development services that are  specifically created for individuals to learn, collaborate and grow from the outsights enabled by cross-sector collaboration.

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