What if the best way to future-proof your organisation isn't to keep looking for talent outside it, but to get better at developing the people already inside?
Talent strategies are facing a perfect storm. Skills are changing rapidly, AI is reshaping the capabilities organisations need, employees are more mobile and external conditions are creating greater uncertainty.
For organisations trying to build long-term resilience, the traditional approach of identifying a gap and immediately recruiting to fill it may no longer be enough.
At the Engage Employee Summit, Paul Bennun, People Engagement Lead at Philip Morris International (PMI), and Hannah Cheal, Head of Talent Strategy, shared how the organisation is rethinking its approach to talent management in the UK — moving away from reactive hiring and towards a model built around internal talent, potential and long-term capability.
For PMI, the starting point was recognising just how quickly the talent landscape is changing.
Employees are increasingly mobile, working patterns have evolved and organisations are competing for skills that may not have existed in their current form a few years ago.
At the same time, AI is changing both the skills people have today and the capabilities organisations will need tomorrow.
Then there is the wider external environment: geopolitical uncertainty, economic pressures and political instability are creating an increasingly unpredictable backdrop for organisations and their people.
So how do you build an organisation that can remain resilient when the world around it keeps changing?
PMI's answer centres on three areas: purpose, culture and internal talent.
Purpose provides a sense of stability when almost everything else is changing.
For PMI, that purpose is its ambition to deliver a smoke-free future. Whatever changes around the organisation, Paul explained, that overarching purpose provides a unifying thread.
Culture provides another source of stability.
While organisations cannot control every external challenge or predict exactly how technology will change the way people work, they can influence how people behave, collaborate and operate.
PMI has spent several years developing its culture and values proposition, incorporating AI into that thinking as technology continues to change the workplace.
But purpose and culture need capability behind them.
And that is where internal talent comes in.
The familiar Build, Borrow, Buy model wasn't new to PMI.
The problem was the weighting.
The organisation had unintentionally developed a pattern of borrow first, buy second and build last.
As a global organisation, PMI had access to a large international talent pool. Borrowing talent from other markets provided an effective way to bring skills and experience into the UK.
But there was a downside.
When someone arrived from another market for two or three years, the immediate talent gap was solved. That could make it easy to lose sight of what should happen next.
When the individual eventually moved on, the organisation would react to the new gap by recruiting externally again.
The result was a cycle of borrow, buy, repeat.
Meanwhile, internal talent could find itself blocked.
Senior roles filled by international talent could prevent UK employees from accessing the experiences they needed to progress. Succession plans became less fluid, and potential internal successors had fewer opportunities to accelerate.
PMI realised it needed to flip the model.
The new ambition was clear: become a net exporter of talent rather than continually importing it.
That requires a very different approach to recruitment.
Instead of asking only, “Can this person do the job we need today?”, PMI is increasingly asking, “What could this person become?”
That thinking now runs through different levels of the organisation.
At entry level, PMI has expanded its graduate programme and introduced internships and apprenticeships.
It has also changed its approach to its field sales force.
Previously, the organisation had recruited primarily for traditional sales skills. But it recognised that this group could become a much stronger source of future talent if it looked for potential rather than simply current capability.
At middle-management level, the organisation is encouraging leaders to take bigger bets on high-potential internal candidates.
If someone demonstrates the potential to operate at a significantly more senior level, why automatically hire externally?
The approach involves giving people greater responsibility earlier, supported by the development, coaching and experiences they need to succeed.
At the most senior level, external recruitment still has a role — but it becomes much more strategic.
People are recruited not simply to fill a particular leadership position, but because they have the potential to progress into even broader global roles.
One of the most interesting elements of PMI's approach is its focus on destination-driven development.
Rather than identifying someone as “high potential” and leaving the definition open-ended, managers are encouraged to ask a more challenging question:
Potential for what?
The process starts by considering how far someone could realistically progress and what their potential destination might be.
From there, PMI works backwards.
What experiences will they need?
Which roles could provide those experiences?
Would they benefit from an international assignment?
What capabilities do they need to develop?
This creates what PMI calls a 3DP — Destination Driven Development Plan.
Rather than creating succession plans that attempt to predict every possible move years into the future, the organisation focuses on critical leadership positions and the experiences people need to reach them.
The result is a deeper form of succession planning.
It isn't simply about identifying the next person in line.
It is about understanding how to get people ready for what comes next.
Moving from reactive recruitment to internal development requires a change in mindset.
Managers naturally want people who can step into a role immediately and deliver results.
But a long-term talent strategy sometimes requires organisations to accept a degree of risk.
PMI is encouraging hiring managers to look internally before automatically requesting an external hire or short-term international assignment.
Could someone who is less experienced but has greater potential take the role?
Could they grow into it with the right support?
Could that decision create a stronger talent pipeline for the future?
This isn't about ignoring immediate business needs.
It is about balancing results now with capability later.
As Paul explained, the shift represents a move away from a short-term model of filling gaps towards one where organisations develop people, strengthen culture and build resilience at the same time.
A strategy like this cannot succeed as an HR initiative operating in isolation.
PMI recognised early that the model required significant stakeholder buy-in.
Leaders needed to understand why the organisation was changing its approach.
Hiring managers needed to become comfortable taking a chance on internal candidates with potential rather than automatically choosing someone with the exact experience required.
Talent acquisition teams also needed to change the way they assessed external candidates, placing greater emphasis on potential and future capability.
And importantly, PMI recognised that this wouldn't happen overnight.
The organisation didn't simply switch off external recruitment and turn on internal mobility.
It is a gradual journey, with the balance shifting over time.
But the principle is clear:
The first bet should be on the talent already inside the organisation.
Internal mobility only works when employees can see that it is happening.
PMI therefore placed significant emphasis on communication.
If an organisation is quietly moving people into new roles, offering stretch assignments and investing in development, employees may not necessarily notice.
That can create the perception that there are limited opportunities to progress — even when significant movement is happening behind the scenes.
PMI is addressing this by making progression more visible through regular communications and town halls.
Examples include highlighting colleagues who have moved into new roles, taken on stretch projects or received investment in their development.
These individual stories may seem small, but consistently sharing them helps demonstrate that career progression is real.
It gives employees tangible examples of what is possible.
The early results suggest that the shift is already creating momentum.
PMI's graduate programme received nearly 4,000 applications for just 11 places.
Rather than allowing that wider talent pool to go to waste, the organisation created additional assessment centres and connected candidates with its field sales force.
The result? Around 30 field-force vacancies were filled with early-career talent from that graduate pipeline.
PMI has also introduced 17 internships, having had none the previous year.
Internal progression has increased by 100% year on year, while the organisation has also doubled its progress towards its targeted number of ready successors for leadership positions.
The figures demonstrate the potential of thinking differently about talent.
Interestingly, PMI's experience with early-career talent also challenged some assumptions about what younger workers are looking for.
The expectation might be that Gen Z candidates would focus primarily on the reputation of the organisation itself.
Instead, Paul observed a strong interest in questions such as:
What is the culture like?
How will I develop?
Where could I go?
How quickly could I progress?
PMI's established graduate programme also helps by allowing prospective candidates to connect with people who have already been through it.
Seeing how quickly previous graduates have progressed — and understanding the cross-functional experiences available — gives candidates a tangible picture of their potential future.
That sense of possibility can be a powerful part of the employee proposition.
Philip Morris' experience highlights an important shift for talent leaders.
In a world of changing skills, AI disruption and increasing competition for specialist capabilities, organisations cannot rely entirely on the external market to provide the workforce they need.
They need to become better at building their own capability.
That means looking beyond immediate skills and asking what potential exists within the organisation.
It means creating clearer career pathways, giving people meaningful development experiences and being willing to take calculated risks on high-potential talent.
It also means recognising that internal mobility isn't simply a retention initiative.
It is a business resilience strategy.
The organisations that can identify, develop and move talent effectively will be better placed to respond when skills change, new opportunities emerge and external hiring becomes more difficult.
The question isn't whether organisations should Build, Borrow or Buy.
The more important question may be:
Are you building enough of the talent you will need tomorrow?
For PMI, the answer is increasingly yes — and the ambition is to become a net exporter of the talent it develops.
That is a significant change in mindset: from filling today's vacancies to building tomorrow's organisation.
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