How Beam Suntory Balanced External and Internal Hiring Strategies With Custom Analytics From Visier

Beam Suntory is a world leader beverage company supplying premium spirits to customers across the globe. With over 5,000 employees, Beam Suntory has an extensive workforce to manage. In 2022, the organization noticed that it had an opportunity to further improve employee internal mobility. 

Beam Suntory prides itself on prioritizing internal promotions and employee movement over external hiring. They know that internally promoting employees is a winning talent strategy for both the employee and for the business because it saves money on talent acquisition costs, time on onboarding brand-new people, and supports employees’ career development. Also, there is a big advantage to employees gaining cross-functional breadth or functional depth when they move into other roles with a company.

In Beam Suntory’s experience, however, there was also a downside that needed swift addressing. The high rate of internal promotions left incumbents’ previous positions vacant, which created the need for them to hire externally. This defeated the purpose of the many benefits internal hiring provides. They needed a plan that still prioritized internal promotions while also curbing excessive external hiring.

To support this initiative, the team needed to distinguish the movement of those employees within the organization and those entering it from outside in order to closely track the volume of internal hires (a core KPI for Beam Suntory). 

This need brought them to Visier. They requested a custom-built metric called the Build Ratio which looked at data from promotions, lateral moves, and external starts. So, if three employees moved into a group, one via a promotion, one via a lateral move, and one via a hire, the Build Ratio would be 66.7%. 

The metric was simple but effective in providing the information Beam Suntory needed to act upon its build-from-within talent strategy while keeping the external-to-internal hiring ratio aligned with its business goals. 

The organization set a goal around its internal-to-external hiring ratio. As they tracked progress, they noticed a standout quarter where their external ratio exceeded the internal. They looked deeper into the data to understand what happened and to answer the question, “How are vacant positions filled?” By working with the talent acquisition team to investigate the data, they found that during this quarter the organization was seeking talent with specialized skillsets. To acquire these skills, they needed to look externally. This investigation allowed them to better communicate how the overall organization was working towards its goal by providing the story behind the data.

With this custom metric in place, Beam Suntory is looking for the next way to innovate in partnership with Visier’s people analytics. “Recently we've begun to roll out a diversity and inclusion version of this dashboard,” an HR executive at the company explains.  “This dashboard is a big breakthrough for us because this is the first time that many of our executives have been able to see the information in this way.” 

See why other global companies like Beam Suntory rely on Visier for their people analytics: Read more customer stories—like those from Panasonic, Standard Bank Group, and eBay.