Lateral Move
A transfer to a different role, team, or function at the same organizational level and comparable compensation, designed to broaden skills, improve engagement, or find a better role fit.
- What Is a Lateral Move?
- Benefits of Lateral Moves
- Types of Lateral Moves
- Common Barriers to Lateral Moves
- How to Build a Lateral Move Program
- Lateral Move vs. Promotion: Making the Right Choice
- Measuring the Success of Lateral Moves
- Companies That Do Lateral Moves Well
- Frequently Asked Questions About Lateral Moves
What Is a Lateral Move?
Key Takeaways
- ✓A lateral move transfers an employee to a different role or department at the same level and similar pay, broadening their experience without a hierarchical change.
- ✓60% of all internal mobility is lateral, not upward, making it the most common type of role change within organizations (LinkedIn, 2024).
- ✓Employees who make lateral moves stay at their company 2x longer on average than those who don't (LinkedIn Learning, 2023).
- ✓Lateral moves aren't consolation prizes for missed promotions. In career lattice models, they're strategic development steps.
- ✓The biggest barrier to lateral moves isn't policy. It's manager hoarding: leaders who block internal transfers to keep their best people.
A lateral move is a sideways step in your career. Same level, similar pay, different role or team. For decades, career advice focused almost exclusively on climbing up. Get the promotion. Move to the next level. But the reality of modern organizations doesn't support that linear thinking. Structures are flatter. Management roles are fewer. And the skills that make someone successful in one function might be exactly what another team needs. That's where lateral moves create value. A marketing analyst who moves to product analytics brings customer acquisition knowledge that the product team lacks. A sales manager who transfers to customer success brings deal-closing instincts to retention conversations. These aren't random moves. They're strategic investments in cross-functional capability. Yet many organizations still treat lateral moves with suspicion. "Why doesn't she want to move up?" is a common reaction. The answer is often straightforward: she wants to learn something new that will make her more effective in the long run, whether that means moving up later or building a broader career.
Benefits of Lateral Moves
Lateral moves benefit the employee, the receiving team, and the organization as a whole. The impact is measurable.
For the employee
Lateral moves build versatility. An engineer who spends three years in backend development and then moves to infrastructure doesn't just learn a new domain. They develop the cross-functional perspective that distinguishes staff-level engineers from senior engineers. Lateral moves also break the monotony of doing the same work for years. Research from Gallup shows that role stagnation is the second-highest driver of disengagement, behind only poor management. Moving to a new team with new challenges resets that engagement clock.
For the organization
When employees move laterally, institutional knowledge spreads. Silos break down because people carry relationships and context from their previous team. Cross-functional collaboration improves because employees understand how other departments actually work, not just how they're described in org charts. There's also a retention benefit that shows up clearly in the data: lateral movers are half as likely to leave as employees who stay in the same role for three or more years. That translates to real savings when you consider the cost of replacing experienced employees.
Types of Lateral Moves
Not every lateral move looks the same. The structure depends on the organization's goals and the employee's development needs.
| Type | Description | Duration | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Permanent transfer | Full role change to a different team or function | Indefinite | Employees seeking a career pivot or better role fit |
| Rotation program | Structured movement through multiple functions | 6-18 months per rotation | Early-career professionals building breadth |
| Project-based secondment | Temporary assignment to another team for a specific project | 3-6 months | Skill building without permanent role change |
| Cross-functional swap | Two employees exchange roles for a defined period | 3-12 months | Building empathy between teams that collaborate closely |
| Geographic transfer | Same role and level in a different office or region | Indefinite | Personal relocation needs or market exposure |
Common Barriers to Lateral Moves
Most organizations say they support internal mobility. Far fewer actually make it easy for employees to move.
Manager hoarding
This is the single biggest obstacle. Managers invest time developing their team members and don't want to lose their best people to another department. Some actively discourage employees from exploring internal opportunities or refuse to approve transfers. The fix is structural: tie manager performance evaluations partly to how many team members they've developed and successfully transitioned to other roles. At companies like Google and Microsoft, "talent export" is considered a positive signal for a manager, not a loss.
Invisible internal job market
If employees don't know about open roles in other departments, lateral moves won't happen. Many companies post positions externally before internal employees even hear about them. Building an internal job board, requiring all positions to be posted internally for a minimum period (commonly 5 to 7 days), and encouraging hiring managers to interview internal candidates first removes this barrier. Some companies go further by assigning internal mobility advisors who match employees with opportunities based on career goals.
Cultural stigma
In up-or-out cultures, a lateral move is seen as a failure. The employee "couldn't get promoted, so they moved sideways." This perception prevents talented people from making moves that would benefit both them and the company. Changing this requires leadership modeling. When a VP publicly takes a lateral move to lead a different division and frames it as strategic growth, it normalizes the behavior for everyone below them.
How to Build a Lateral Move Program
A formal program removes friction and makes lateral moves a normal part of career development instead of an exception.
Policy design
Define eligibility criteria: minimum tenure in current role (typically 12 to 18 months), performance at "meets expectations" or above, and manager awareness (not necessarily approval, as requiring approval gives managers veto power over employee development). Specify the process: how employees express interest, how receiving managers evaluate candidates, timelines for transition, and knowledge transfer expectations. Include salary guidelines. Most lateral moves maintain current compensation, but moves into higher-cost-of-living locations or functions with different market rates may warrant adjustments.
Technology and tools
An internal talent marketplace platform makes the program scalable. Tools like Gloat, Eightfold, and Fuel50 use AI to match employees with internal opportunities based on skills, career interests, and organizational needs. Even without dedicated software, a well-maintained internal job board in your HRIS, combined with quarterly "career conversations" between employees and managers, creates enough visibility to get lateral moves happening.
Transition support
Don't just move the employee and hope for the best. Provide a structured transition: 2 to 4 weeks of overlap with the predecessor or a designated onboarding buddy, a 30-60-90 day plan specific to the new role, and regular check-ins with both the new manager and HR. The first lateral move is the hardest. If the experience is positive, the employee becomes an advocate who encourages others to consider internal mobility.
Lateral Move vs. Promotion: Making the Right Choice
Employees often face a choice between waiting for a promotion and taking a lateral move now. The right answer depends on the situation.
| Factor | Lateral Move | Promotion |
|---|---|---|
| Career stage | Best for early to mid-career skill building | Best when ready for increased scope |
| Timeline | Available now or within weeks | May require 6-18 months of waiting |
| Skill development | Builds breadth across functions | Deepens expertise in one area |
| Compensation | Usually maintains current pay | Typically 10-15% increase |
| Risk level | Lower: same level expectations | Higher: must prove capability at new level |
| Long-term impact | Creates versatility for future leadership roles | Creates depth for specialist or management tracks |
Measuring the Success of Lateral Moves
Track these metrics to determine whether your lateral move program is working.
- Internal mobility rate: percentage of open positions filled by internal candidates (benchmark: 20-30% for healthy programs).
- Lateral move retention: compare 12 and 24-month retention rates for lateral movers vs. employees who stayed in the same role.
- Time to productivity: how quickly lateral movers reach full performance in their new role (target: 60-75% of external hire ramp time).
- Employee engagement scores: compare engagement survey results for employees who've moved laterally vs. those who haven't.
- Manager satisfaction: survey receiving managers on the quality and readiness of internal transfers.
- Subsequent promotion rate: track whether lateral movers are promoted at higher rates than employees who stayed put (they typically are).
Companies That Do Lateral Moves Well
These organizations have built cultures where lateral movement is normal and encouraged.
Spotify
Spotify's internal marketplace encourages employees to switch squads and tribes every 18 to 24 months. The company frames lateral moves as "tours of duty" that build the cross-functional knowledge needed for senior roles. They've reported that employees who complete at least two lateral moves are 3x more likely to reach leadership positions.
Unilever
Unilever's Flex Experiences program uses an AI-powered talent marketplace to match employees with short-term projects in other departments. It's not a full role change but a lateral exposure that often leads to permanent transfers. The program has filled over 30,000 project assignments globally since launching in 2018.
W.L. Gore
Gore (makers of Gore-Tex) operates a lattice organization with no traditional hierarchy. Employees choose their commitments and can move between teams freely. There's no formal lateral move "program" because movement is built into the operating model. The result: Gore consistently ranks among the best workplaces globally with voluntary turnover well below industry average.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a lateral move a demotion?
Can I make a lateral move without my manager's approval?
How long should I stay in a role before making a lateral move?
Will a lateral move hurt my chances of promotion?
What if the lateral move doesn't work out?
Written by Adithyan RK