Succession planning

As said, Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing new leaders who can replace old leaders when they leave, retire or die. Succession planning increases the availability of experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they become available. It's a known assumption that most organizations don’t do succession planning. Often the reasons include the high level of routine work. Succession planning is the process of preparing expected vacancies in the organization.

Some people misunderstand and believe it’s replacement planning. However, succession management is far more detailed and far more comprehensive than picking a single leader. It is not a onetime event, but a continuous process. For taking the efficient decision agile methodologies should be followed.

In simple words, succession management identifies the talent needed for a particular business or organization, examines the existing talent available, identifies gaps in needs and supply, and then maps a plan to ensure the organization has a system in place to develop such talent.

Steps:

  • Integrate with organization strategy
  • Involve top management
  • Assess the key talent
  • Follow development practices
  • Monitor and evaluate the process.

The individual identifies as potential successors should be told what specific development they need to build their competencies. These practices are not just limited to HR but leadership team and CEO too focuses on creating and implementing succession plan. As there could be unexpected attrition anytime or any other factor can effect. Identifying skill gaps and aligning it to competencies required for the role/ is very crucial step. There should be transparency at each step involved.

It is a strategy to ensure:

  • A pipeline of qualified candidates for executive roles.
  • Transparency around individual career.
  • How to keep best talent under succession plan and development.
  • To develop leaders for tomorrow.
  • To challenge leaders for tomorrow’s need.

There should be complete plan with all the details of which are the key positions, critical roles, future needs, factors affecting, putting a team together and convincing leadership team.

Advantages of succession planning

  • Strong leadership team
  • Business continuity
  • Increase productivity
  • ROI
  • Happy employees=Retention
  • Business growth
  • Re hire cost saving

However, there are certain limitation as well for creating succession plan

  • Future growth and business impacts of the organization cannot be oversee.
  • Projects demand may change and attrition can happen anytime.
  • Lack of Financial resources.
  • Changes in the needed skill.

Practices for succession planning

Nextgen people organizational model can be used to develop potential talent through

  • Coaching, mentoring and Feedback mechanism
  • Developmental & training assignments
  • Sessions
  • Exposure to senior roles

Succession planning should be well integrated with talent management practices:

Talent Acquisition:
We need to see that are we just hiring for current position or also creating pool for future needs.

Onboarding:
Are we facilitating relation building for employees to be with company for long-term?

Development
Are we developing our employees to be successor?

Retention
Do we analyze why our best employee leave the company or why they are staying

Performance management
Are managers accountable for development and career planning of their team members

Workforce planning
Do we identify successors who align with future business needs?

We can use several templates for succession planning and its measures

  • Listing down in excel or macros list of all critical positions along with the rating from 1-5 basis on the availability, business impact, unique skillsets and urgency need of the role.
  • Role profiling along with detail skill sets required for each key position to be identified and noted.
  • Nomination of succession candidates.
  • Documenting development needs, tracking progress and identifying development opportunities.
  • Measuring and communicating success using the succession planning template scorecard.

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