Laurens Waling

June 6, 2023 – Published on HR Practice

By: Jan Tjerk Boonstra and Laurens Waling of 8vance

New analyses of labor market data reveal that HR professionals are significantly less mobile than other occupational groups. Is it time to urge HR to start moving themselves? Jan Tjerk Boonstra, a speaker at the upcoming HR Day, and Laurens Waling of 8vance provide answers.

Tech scale-up 8vance develops artificial intelligence to match people and work, including through the development of the integral skills passport. The 8vance research team conducts statistical analyses of 85 million people’s profiles and 25 million job vacancies in different countries and languages, often yielding very surprising outcomes and insights. One of these is that HR professionals are significantly less mobile than other occupational groups.

“Once you’re in an HR role, the chance is negligible that you’ll ever take on another position outside the HR island.”

Algorithms analyzed the career steps of 30 million people collected from publicly accessible information sources in labor market-comparable countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and England. They examined how mobility from one role to another occurs and the extent to which people switch to a different field.

It turns out that people working in HR do have vertical career paths but remain within HR. In other words, the HR business partner may become an HR manager but is statistically “condemned” to continue working within HR. Is HR such a much more interesting field? Or are HR people less enterprising than those working in other fields?

Little Advancement

The researchers organized this enormous dataset so that roles with a lot of exchange (advancement) are placed close together, and roles with little movement to others are relatively further apart. This creates the graphical image of the “HR island,” as seen in the graph below.

The roles on this “HR island,” such as recruiter, HR business partner, HR policy advisor, and HR manager, are filled by people who seem to do this for decades. In other words, once you’re in this field, the chance is negligible that you’ll ever take on another position outside the HR island.

In Search of Transferable Skills

This surprising finding was made while mapping transferable skills in the labor market, which are highly relevant for a well-functioning labor market and economy. In that analysis, frequently occurring skills of great importance are identified.

The more these skills are important in multiple sectors and roles, the more significant they become in terms of transferability. From this, it appears that HR roles possess relatively few transferable skills.

The graphical representation shows that, for example, project management is a skill with great transferability between roles and sectors.

Confirmation, Eye-Opener, and Self-Reflection?

For most of us who have been working in HR for a longer time, this doesn’t come as a surprise. It just pressed upon us the fact that we, as HR professionals, are not very mobile ourselves, even though we are the ones calling for investment in employability and lifelong learning and development. In that light, calls for “taking control of your own career” and “getting moving” are indeed reasons for self-reflection.

This raises several questions. Do we, despite the “great shift” towards business partnership, have sufficient knowledge of and impact on the rest of the organization? In that case, you’d expect more mobility, wouldn’t you? And are we ourselves enterprising and innovative enough to keep learning and embark on new paths? And thus, do we ourselves learn and develop sufficiently?

We see this as the beginning of a deeper and broader analysis and discussion. We welcome everyone’s comments!

Read here the results of the poll on the question: Should HR professionals also more often, in the context of their employability, look beyond the boundaries of the HR domain when making a career move?

Laurens Waling is Chief Evangelist at 8vance.

Jan Tjerk Boonstra works at Human Capital Group and is affiliated with HR Academy, CHRO, TIAS, and Inholland Academy.