Five Steps for A Seamless Succession Planning Process
When it comes to lacking a succession plan for their company, 31% of HRs say that they do not
When it comes to lacking a succession plan for their company, 31% of HRs say that they do not have the time or resources while another 15% state that the company is too small. However, when a position falls vacant, these businesses not only lose out on skills but also tend to face major disruptions.
To avoid this, every organisation needs to undertake the succession planning process.
With evaluation and succession planning tools like Success Circles™, 9 box grid, and others HRMs can streamline the process.
What Makes Succession Planning Essential
Business continuity and stability are essential for the success of a business. In the absence of a succession plan, often there are no trained personnel to step up to a position that falls vacant.
Thus, when a company has no succession plan in place, it can suffer the following:
- Loss of knowledge and talent on unexpected retirements or departures from the company.
- A hike in the recruitment and training costs.
- Poor talent management regarding the existing pool of employees.
- Uncertainty, conflicts, leadership vacuum, and power struggles when a position falls vacant.
- Hampers the company’s ability to adapt.
- Low employee morale and productivity, and thus, a high turnover.
However, with the right succession planning process, companies can enjoy the following benefits:
- Manage the risk of unexpected departures from the management team.
- Identify employees with the potential to work in a leadership role.
- Ensure stable and orderly leadership transitions.
- Retain the best performing talent from your workforce.
- Proactively preserve institutional knowledge that comes with experience in the particular company.
- Prevent a leadership vacuum and conflicts that may arise due to the lack of a clear leader.
- Foster the development of leadership skills.
- Reinforce the career development plans for your employees.
Further, 98% of leaders agree that if their organisation has a succession plan, there is definite follow-through.
Succession Planning with Efficiency: Steps to Follow
With an increase in the percentage of CEO turnovers (about 1.8%), no company should avoid the succession planning process. Thus, to achieve the above, every company must undergo the succession planning process.
For accurate planning and roll-out, HRMs can try out the below:
Step 1: Identifying Critical Roles that Need a Successor
Primarily positions that are essential for a company to keep running smoothly are the ones that require a trained successor to take up the mantle. These usually include management and leadership roles, where any issue can have a significant impact.
Step 2: Define All Essential Competencies
This encompasses relevant skills, traits, knowledge, and competencies that are important to adequately perform in the role. Further, having leadership skills is of the utmost need.
Step 3: Assess the Potential Talent Pool
For accurate and transparent employee evaluations, HRMs can take help from tools like Success Circle™, the 9-box grid, and more. Using these, they can establish a fair mechanism for identifying candidates for management roles.
Step 4: Create a Development Plan/Training Program
Once you have identified the skills that are necessary to perform well in the role, it is time to create a training program. By linking the existing skills to what is needed for the job, designing a development program becomes one step easier.
Further, it is important to keep the career interests of the employees in mind when selecting them for succession training. Plus, HRMs can also check in with the employees to learn about their job interests and use succession planning as a motivator.
Step 5: Evaluate the Efficacy of the Plan
Once the succession plans are ready, it is time for deployment. Be sure to evaluate if the succession plan in place is adequately able to train employees for key positions. Further, it should ensure that positions that fall vacant are filled quickly and with competent, well-trained talent.
Role of HRMs in Succession Planning Process
As an HRM, the below tasks fall under your scope vis-a-vis the succession planning process:
- Collaborate with the leadership team to devise a succession plan.
- Identify key positions that need succession planning.
- Make sure these align with the organisational goals.
- Engage and motivate employees via the succession planning process.
- Instill a sense of accountability among employees.
Some Tools That Help With the Succession Planning Process
Assessing which employees have the potential to fit into succession plans needs to be done with care. Since 70% of succession plans tend to fail within 2 years, this becomes doubly important. Thus, to address this, some of the most effective tools are:
- Success Circles ™
An AI-driven tool, Success Circles™ not only aims to deliver accurate results but also allows you to visualise the progress of each employee. Each goal and achievement is mapped in a dashboard that accounts for Development, Performance, Culture and brand, Communication, and Leadership. Using the data from Success Circles™, HRMs can evaluate whether the employee is suitable for succession plans.
- 9 Box Grid for Talent Management
With the help of a 3×3 grid, HRMs can identify the top performers with the most potential. This, in turn, helps identify employees suited to the succession planning process.
- 360-degree Feedback
By taking feedback of employees from their managers, team leaders, and peers, you can have an in-depth understanding of how well an employee can perform plus their soft skills.
- Employee Scorecards
With performance indicators as the parameters to judge the achievements of an employee, these let the HRM and managers learn if an employee is performing well.
Tips for an Effective Succession Planning Process
Enlist the help of tools like Success Circles™, the 9-box talent matrix, 360-degree feedback, and more. Further, as a best practice, you can adopt and implement the below tips:
- Start planning successors at an early stage.
- Use your talent management platform to identify the most suitable employees.
- Make sure that the succession planning process has a set structure.
- Goals, targets, and standards should be measurable and realistic.
- Tailor the training programs as per the role.
- Account for both outcomes and the processes.
- Apply the long-term perspectives for the company.
- Ensure diversity and inclusiveness in the succession planning process.
Summing Up
From employees to the leadership team, everyone is on the lookout for a better opportunity. Thus, every organisation needs to take up the succession planning process to ensure that they do not face disruptions during management transitions.
Further, with help from tools like Success Circles™ and 9-box talent matrix, it is easier to identify the right talent for succession training. Design and deploy a succession plan to ensure easy handovers and a seamless transition period for your business.
