Four in ten employers across Europe prefer to fill job vacancies with external talent compared to 27% who choose to train internal employees so that they can fill vacant positions. This is according to a survey of European HR service provider SD Worx among more than 16,000 employees and almost 5,000 HR managers in 16 European countries.

The research showed that 34% of employers said they don't really have a preference when it comes to filling vacancies with external or internal talent. It comes as 66.8% of European employers are aware of their long-term talent needs.

Norway and France seem more likely to attract external talent (48% each), followed by Poland and Spain (46% each) and Italy, Ireland and Sweden (41% each). On the other end of the spectrum, Finland leads the way in internal talent development (34%), followed by the Netherlands, Denmark and Croatia (33% each) and Austria and Switzerland (32% each).

Meanwhile, one-third of companies are finding it hard to move their employees to other positions within the organisation. France struggles with this the most (43%), followed by Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Finland (all 39%) and finally Italy (37%). This may explain why in 40% of European organisations, managers do not seem to be in favour of it.

On the employee side, 65% said they would not immediately interested in taking on a new job within the same company.

While six in ten European companies know what types of talent they need in the long term, only half have an actual overview of the ambitions their employees are pursuing. Two in five organisations lack precise information about the skills of their employees.

When it comes to learning and development, two in three employees learn new things at work on a daily basis, and half of European companies encourage job crafting, which allows job content to be adapted to employees' talents and preferences. One in three employees already engages in job crafting.

At the same time, one in three employees indicated that they have sufficient opportunities to move on to other jobs or departments in the organisation. Less than half (43%) know what job they can advance to or how to approach this.