Internal Mobility

Internal mobility: a definition

Internal mobility (التنقّل الوظيفي الداخلي), also searched for as internal career mobility, is the move of an employee into another role within the same organisation, whether upward, sideways or into a different specialism, in place of filling that role by hiring someone from outside.

The three directions of internal mobility

An internal move can take one of three directions:

• Promotion. It is a move to a higher level on the same path, so the employee stays in the line of work they already know and takes on a more senior position in it.
• Lateral move. It is a move to a role at a similar level in another department. It carries no visible promotion, and for that reason it may be neither requested by employees nor offered to them, even though it is the move that builds breadth of experience.
• Career change. It is a move into a different specialism, made on the strength of capabilities that can be carried from one role to another. It needs training that runs alongside the move.

A move in any of the three directions can change the work that the employee was engaged to do. Article 60 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) bars assigning a worker work that differs materially from the agreed work without the worker’s written consent. Its exception is limited to cases of necessity arising from exceptional circumstances, and to no more than 30 days in a year. How Article 60 of the Labor Law applies to a temporary change of duties is covered under acting assignment.

Article 60 of the Labor Law opens by preserving another provision of the Labor Law, Article 38. Under that article, the employer may not employ a worker in a profession other than the one recorded on the worker’s work permit, and the worker may not work outside that profession before the statutory procedures for a change of profession have been taken. Article 41 of the Labor Law leaves the conditions and procedures for a change of profession to the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية), and Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation defines that procedure as licensing a worker who is not a Saudi national to work in a profession other than the one they are licensed to practise. The procedure therefore concerns workers who are not Saudi nationals, and it has no application to a Saudi employee whose role changes. Where a career change moves a worker who is not a Saudi national into a different profession, the statutory procedures for the change of profession have to be taken before the worker starts work in the new profession; the agreement of employer and worker does not replace them.

Royal Decree M/44, in force from 19 February 2025, amended a number of provisions of the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Articles 38, 41 and 60 of the Labor Law.

Why internal mobility is preferred to external hiring where it is possible

An internal candidate arrives already knowing the organisation, its procedures and its network of working relationships. For a new hire, that knowledge can take months to build.

In addition, a visible internal path gives employees a reason to stay. An employee who can see a next role inside the organisation has a route forward that does not require leaving it. Internal mobility is therefore tied directly to retention strategy and to career pathing, the planning of the routes an employee can follow from one role to the next.

What holds internal mobility back in practice

In practice, the obstacle to internal mobility lies not in policy but in the incentives of managers. A manager who loses a good employee to another department, and who is not given a replacement quickly, has a practical reason to hold up that employee’s move.

What addresses the obstacle is a set of explicit arrangements that the organisation chooses and announces:

• A known handover period. It is a period to which both parties to the move commit, so that the matter does not stay open.
• A clear limit on the manager’s objection. It means that the organisation gives the releasing manager a say in the timing of the move, without that manager’s objection being able to prevent the move altogether.
• Internal advertising of vacancies. It means that a vacancy is advertised inside the organisation before it is advertised outside, or at the same time, and not after the external advertisement has gone out.
• No requirement that the manager know in advance. It means that an employee can submit an application without first telling their manager. Where that prior knowledge is required, it can deter employees from applying at all.

The line internal mobility does not cross

Internal mobility is not a substitute for selection criteria. The internal candidate enters the same selection track as candidates from outside and is measured against the same criteria.

Preferring the internal candidate when two candidates are equally matched is acceptable. Setting the criteria aside in the internal candidate’s favour is a different matter. It can produce a weak appointment, and it can leave the team with the impression that being close at hand stands in for merit.

What a low level of internal mobility says

An organisation that fills all of its roles from outside tells its employees, without ever saying so, that the way to advance is to leave.

Measuring internal mobility is simple. The measure is the share of vacancies filled internally out of all the vacancies filled over the same period, so the calculation needs only two counts: the vacancies filled by existing employees, and every vacancy filled, whether from inside or from outside.

The share is examined level by level, not only for the organisation as a whole, because it may be high at the lower levels and absent at the levels above them. A single figure for the whole organisation can hide that difference between levels.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.