leadership development and opportunities for employees to move into roles before every vacancy becomes a recruitment exercise.
The ambition is to maintain a 70:30 balance between internal promotions and external hiring, according to Iñigo Capell, Global Chief People and Resources Officer at Radisson Hotel Group. The group’s 2025 Responsible Business Report, meanwhile, records an internal appointment rate of 40 percent.
The larger question is how organisations can build an internal supply of talent instead of repeatedly turning to the external market for people who may already exist within their workforce.
Moving beyond the next vacancy
Radisson’s approach starts with making career progression more visible. The group redesigned its ‘Career Proposition’ in 2023, introducing ‘Career Tools’ and career activation moments to help employees understand the opportunities available to them.
A career proposition has three words that define it: broad, fast, and clear.Iñigo Capell, Global Chief People and Resources Officer, Radisson Hotel Group
Broad means employees can explore opportunities across functions rather than remain confined to one career track. Fast refers to accelerating the progression of high-potential employees, while clear means defining the routes available and the capabilities required to move forward.
The distinction is important. Internal mobility cannot become a reliable source of talent if employees do not know which roles they can aspire to, what experience they need or how to access opportunities beyond their immediate teams.
For a hotel group, this could mean making career progression visible across operational roles, functions and locations, rather than treating each job as an isolated position. The strategic value lies in identifying transferable capabilities and creating pathways through which employees can take on greater responsibility.
Radisson’s 2024 Responsible Business Report said participation in its career-transition programme had increased fivefold compared with 2022. This points to a growing emphasis on career movement, although participation figures alone do not establish how many transitions resulted in promotions or critical roles being filled internally.
Hiring for potential, not just experience
A talent-supply model also requires organisations to reconsider how they select employees for advancement.
Capell said Radisson was willing to promote employees who did not meet every requirement for a role, provided they demonstrated strong potential.
We want to promote people that might meet 60-70 percent of the requirements, but might miss experience or something. Nonetheless, we will take the risk.Iñigo Capell, Global Chief People and Resources Officer, Radisson Hotel Group
The approach challenges a familiar problem in recruitment and succession planning: the tendency to prioritise candidates who have already performed the same job over those who have the ability to learn it.
Promoting employees with some capability gaps, however, requires more than confidence in their potential. It also demands structured development, practical exposure and support as they take on unfamiliar responsibilities.
This is where internal mobility becomes a business capability rather than simply an HR programme. When organisations identify potential early and provide the right development opportunities, they can create a pipeline of candidates for future roles instead of starting the search only when a vacancy emerges.
Preparing leaders before positions open
Radisson’s ‘Accelerate’ programme illustrates this principle in its general manager pipeline.
Rather than training employees without a defined destination and waiting for suitable vacancies to arise, the programme identifies candidates in advance.
Instead of creating the programme, training the people, and then whenever you have an opportunity, assign them to a role, we make the filter before. We know that everybody that joins Accelerate will become a GM.Iñigo Capell, Global Chief People and Resources Officer, Radisson Hotel Group
Participants spend six months shadowing experienced general managers, gaining exposure to the practical demands of running a hotel.
“The real training and the real value happens when you mirror during six months some of the best General Managers (GMs) we have,” Capell said.
Radisson also shares 50 percent of the cost of these placements through a central budget, including half of the participant’s salary during a six-month placement in another city or country.
The model links selection, development and a potential career destination. It also requires the business to invest before a position becomes available, rather than treating leadership preparation as a response to an immediate staffing requirement.
For internal mobility to serve as a dependable source of talent, that distinction matters. Employees need opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities in real operating environments, while the organisation needs a clearer view of who could be ready to take on larger roles.
Training at scale, but measuring the outcomes
The development infrastructure supporting these pathways is substantial. Radisson’s 2025 Responsible Business Report records more than one million training courses completed, 8.5 million training hours and an average training rating of 4.88 out of five.
Radisson Academy provides online and live learning, while its learning partner offers nearly 2,000 video lessons. A 90-day welcome journey also introduces new employees to the group’s culture and expectations.
internal appointments rise, how many participants progress into leadership roles and whether the organisation can fill critical positions more consistently from within.
Radisson’s reported 40 percent internal appointment rate provides one indicator, while the fivefold increase in participation in its career-transition programme offers another view of its mobility efforts. Neither figure, on its own, establishes the full business impact of the strategy.
The shift in thinking is from asking how to recruit for the next vacancy to asking how to develop the capabilities the business will need next.
For Radisson, the stated 70:30 balance between internal promotions and external hiring signals an ambition to draw more heavily on existing talent. Its career pathways, transition programmes and general manager development model show how the group is attempting to support that ambition.
External hiring will continue to matter, particularly where organisations need new expertise or capabilities that are not available internally. The objective is not to eliminate recruitment from outside, but to make better use of the talent already in the business.
Ultimately, the test of an internal mobility strategy is not how many courses employees complete or how many people enter development programmes. It is whether the organisation can consistently move capable people into the roles it needs to fill, while giving employees a credible view of how their careers can progress.
For hospitality groups competing for talent while managing complex operations across locations, internal mobility can offer a more structured way to connect employee development with business requirements. The opportunity for Radisson, as for other employers, is to turn that connection into a measurable source of future talent.
NOTE: The above figures are scourced from Radisson Hotel Group Responsible Business Reports, 2023–2025, and comments by the spokesperson during the interview. The 70:30 ambition and 40 percent internal appointment rate should not be treated as directly comparable.