Any organisation serious about continuity will have planned for succession. Succession planning has always been considered as essentially a strategic activity, which in the past has focused mainly on targeting key management positions. Organisations are now realising that there is a need to expand the scope of this activity to cover key positions and key persons across the entire organisation. This involves a deliberate attempt at developing fully the skills and abilities of identified successors. Having a workable succession plan ensures that, at all times, core skills needed for the smooth operation of the organisation is available. Succession planning helps an organisation to prepare for expected and unexpected events.
The fastest remedial action in some cases had been to recall employees from retirement and offer them fixed term contracts Having a succession planning system in place ensures that no single individual can bring work to a halt at any point in time due to his or her unavailability
Succession planning must be based on the overall corporate strategy of the organisation. It must be an ongoing activity, which constantly seeks to align an organisation’s business demands with its human capital requirements. It is therefore critical for organisations to also have well developed corporate plans. A good corporate plan will incorporate the strategic concerns of the organisation and the requirement for achieving them. This then enables proper planning of human resource requirements.
A succession plan does not operate in isolation; it must be linked to the human resource strategy of the organisation. This strategy is defined in the systems and policies that are used to manage the human resource. These include recruitment, training/development, career development planning and an effective performance management system.
A succession plan also forms part of the broader human resource plan which seeks to ensure that at all times the organisation has the right people performing the right jobs. Whereas a human resource plan will be looking at the appropriate staffing numbers and skills mix for the entire organisation, a succession plan will focus on ensuring that there is a steady pool of candidates with the requisite skills, knowledge and attributes to perform the identified critical roles in the organisation
Basic steps
A team and not an individual must develop a succession plan. This team must include all the senior executives in the organisation and be directed by an expert. The main steps for developing a succession plan are:
Identify key jobs and key skills across the entire organisation.
Anticipate your staff turnover for a planned period
Identify the key individuals included in this list and put in place a contingency plan for these executives.
Identify more than one potential candidate as a successor for each position. Consider whether an external candidate should be sourced and groomed for the role.
If the candidate is already in the business, assess his or her skills and identify any weaknesses.
Draw up a development programme for the identified candidates and follow that programm
[/list]
A succession plan must be documented, achievable and operational. Above all it should be transparent and understood by all employees
Managing the succession process
Having a succession plan should not end the process, as the process needs to be managed for the plan to work. It is important to develop and groom the identified successors for their future responsibilities by identifying their training needs, both technical and managerial, and ensure that they are met.
The design of the system should be such that it is transparent and easily understood by all employees. The entire workforce must be educated on the system and their concerns addressed. Senior executives have responsibility for the system and they in turn must ensure support from all to make the system work. The success of your succession planning and management lies greatly in the support senior executives and management gives it.
Succession planning allows you to plan for what you have control over now, and to mitigate the effect of events you do not have control over in the future.
Succession planing[/i][/b][/i][/b]
Succession planning ensures that there are highly qualified people in all positions, not just today, but tomorrow, next year, and five years from now.
How Succession Planning Helps
Succession planning establishes a process that recruits employees, develops their skills and abilities, and prepares them for advancement, all while retaining them to ensure a return on the organization's training investment. Succession planning involves:
Understanding the organization's long-term goals and objectives
Identifying the workforce's developmental needs
Determining workforce trends and predictions
In the past, succession planning typically targeted only key leadership positions. In today's organizations, it is important to include key positions in a variety of job categories.
With good succession planning, employees are ready for new leadership roles as the need arises, and when someone leaves, a current employee is ready to step up to the plate. In addition, succession planning can help develop a diverse workforce, by enabling decision makers to look at the future make-up of the organization as a whole.
The results will undoubtedly include:
Better retention
Valuable training goals
Increased preparation for leadership
Greater employee satisfaction
Enhanced commitment to work and the workplace
Improved corporate image
Definition:
Succession planning is a process whereby an organization ensures that employees are recruited and developed to fill each key role within the company. Through your succession planning process, you recruit superior employees, develop their knowledge, skills, and abilities, and prepare them for advancement or promotion into ever more challenging roles.
Through your succession planning process, you also retain superior employees because they appreciate the time, attention, and development that you are investing in them. To effectively do succession planning in your organization, you must identify the organization’s long term goals. You must hire superior staff.
You need to identify and understand the developmental needs of your employees. You must ensure that all key employees understand their career paths and the roles they are being developed to fill. You need to focus resources on key employee retention. You need to be aware of employment trends in your area to know the roles you will have a difficult time filling externally.
Why the new interest in succession?
The forces that have renewed interest in succession systems and have changed them in dramatic ways are trends that have affected business in the new global economy. Leadership is and has always been a relatively scarce commodity within companies. To lose a strong, effective leader is a serious blow to any organisation.
Companies reward high performers with opportunities for development and not necessarily extended, long-term employment. The internet has enhanced the mobility of leadership talent, making it easy for employees to find opportunities elsewhere and for those opportunities to come knocking on their door. Executive recruiters and headhunters today possess greater clout and sophistication. No longer is it unfair game to recruit your competitor’s best and brightest workers. Non-stop, unpredictable organisational change has caused organisations to quickly identify growing gaps in talent and emerging needs for new types of talent.
Best practice in succession management
Our research has found that ‘succession savvy’ corporations possess several traits that characterise their winning approaches to succession management. First, their succession systems are easy to use. Winning systems are non-bureaucratic, uncomplicated processes – with a unified approach to ensure consistency and maintain objectivity across business units, organisational levels and geographic areas.
The best systems are developmentally oriented, rather than simply replacement oriented. The system becomes a proactive vehicle for managers and executives to reflect on the progress of their talent and the opportunities they require for genuine development. Highly effective systems always actively involve the very top players in the organisation. Senior executives view effective succession management as a critical strategic tool for attracting and retaining talent.
Best practice succession systems are also effective at spotting gaps in talent and identifying important lynchpin positions – the select set of jobs that are critical to the overall success of the organisation. Succession planning does the job of monitoring the succession process, enabling the company to ensure that the right people are moving into the right jobs at the right time and that gaps are being spotted early on.
The most successful systems are built around continual reinvention. Best practice companies continually refine and adjust their systems as they receive feedback, monitor developments in technology and learn from other leading organisations. Where old systems were characterised by complete confidentiality and secrecy, today’s systems actually encourage involvement by individuals who are participants and candidates. Under older systems, few participants knew where they actually stood in terms of their potential for career opportunities ahead.
Developmental activities
Developmental activities do not dramatically differ from one best practice organisation to the next. In every case, these companies invest the majority of their time and resources in top-tier (executive) talent. There are four major common factors in how best practice organisations engage their current and future leaders in developmental activities:
1. They believe that the most important developmental activity is job assignments or work experience, so they spend considerable time balancing the organisation’s need to fill vacant positions with assignments that will help key people grow and develop their potential.
2. They use a variety of developmental activities including mentoring, coaching, job rotation, traditional educational programs and formalised feedback processes.
3. They try new approaches to development, including special assignments, action learning and web-based educational activities.
4. They find that computer-based technology has expanded their ability to effectively monitor developmental activities.
Internal leadership and executive education
Best practice organisations all have formal internal programs in place that focus on the further development of their top-tier executives. Dell Computer, for example, focuses most of its development activities on the global corporate talent pool that houses its top talent, identifying its best and brightest and holding business unit leaders accountable for carrying out whatever developmental actions are designated for those future stars. Most best practice companies agree that the vast majority of real learning employees encounter takes place on the job. Consequently, most of these companies have a special assignments or action learning program in place.
One of the most common and effective approaches is a taskforce assignment based on real and significant issues confronting the organisation. High-potential employees at Bank of America are assigned a specific enterprise topic to study and present findings to senior leaders. The company’s Six Sigma efforts also help place these top performers on highly quantifiable and large impact projects. Best practice organisations all participate in mentoring and coaching programs, but typically on an informal basis. Formal coaching is usually reserved for top executive high potentials and is commonly outsourced.
Trends in succession management
There are several critical trends that will further strengthen the transformation of succession management from a replacement tool to a development and leadership capability tool, thereby ensuring that systems and processes are responsive and less bureaucratic.
Succession planning will continue to become more integrated into the everyday life of organisations, moving from a formal ‘annual event’ to become a part of the daily fabric of doing business.
Technology will also integrate succession processes into the desktop computers of managers. A single icon will grant immediate and widespread access to succession planning information.
Additionally, all of the components of HR management are being looked at, appropriately, as fully integrated, aligned systems, rather than as a set of disconnected activities. Gone is the silo mentality that kept HR from other business units. The hyper-competition of the contemporary world makes such an approach outdated and dangerous to the bottom line.
Technology can improve planning
To increase access to and use of succession planning, best practice organisations continue to use technology as a critical facilitator of the process. Web-based succession planning systems enable companies to run their process online and ensure continuous access to data. Employees can then take ownership of their own development plans through their own desktops. While subjectivity will always be part of candidate assessment, great progress has been made toward more objective assessments, including 360-degree feedback.
As the use of raters expands, the array of raters will broaden to include administrative staff, support staff, internal and external customers. Best practice organisations will increase their efforts at training line managers and executives to perform more objective assessments when providing 360-degree feedback.
In conclusion, successful succession management is not a static target. Outstanding practices stay outstanding by continuously refining and adapting to meet changing circumstances.
The fastest remedial action in some cases had been to recall employees from retirement and offer them fixed term contracts Having a succession planning system in place ensures that no single individual can bring work to a halt at any point in time due to his or her unavailability
Succession planning must be based on the overall corporate strategy of the organisation. It must be an ongoing activity, which constantly seeks to align an organisation’s business demands with its human capital requirements. It is therefore critical for organisations to also have well developed corporate plans. A good corporate plan will incorporate the strategic concerns of the organisation and the requirement for achieving them. This then enables proper planning of human resource requirements.
A succession plan does not operate in isolation; it must be linked to the human resource strategy of the organisation. This strategy is defined in the systems and policies that are used to manage the human resource. These include recruitment, training/development, career development planning and an effective performance management system.
A succession plan also forms part of the broader human resource plan which seeks to ensure that at all times the organisation has the right people performing the right jobs. Whereas a human resource plan will be looking at the appropriate staffing numbers and skills mix for the entire organisation, a succession plan will focus on ensuring that there is a steady pool of candidates with the requisite skills, knowledge and attributes to perform the identified critical roles in the organisation
Basic steps
A team and not an individual must develop a succession plan. This team must include all the senior executives in the organisation and be directed by an expert. The main steps for developing a succession plan are:
Identify key jobs and key skills across the entire organisation.
Anticipate your staff turnover for a planned period
Identify the key individuals included in this list and put in place a contingency plan for these executives.
Identify more than one potential candidate as a successor for each position. Consider whether an external candidate should be sourced and groomed for the role.
If the candidate is already in the business, assess his or her skills and identify any weaknesses.
Draw up a development programme for the identified candidates and follow that programm
[/list]
A succession plan must be documented, achievable and operational. Above all it should be transparent and understood by all employees
Managing the succession process
Having a succession plan should not end the process, as the process needs to be managed for the plan to work. It is important to develop and groom the identified successors for their future responsibilities by identifying their training needs, both technical and managerial, and ensure that they are met.
The design of the system should be such that it is transparent and easily understood by all employees. The entire workforce must be educated on the system and their concerns addressed. Senior executives have responsibility for the system and they in turn must ensure support from all to make the system work. The success of your succession planning and management lies greatly in the support senior executives and management gives it.
Succession planning allows you to plan for what you have control over now, and to mitigate the effect of events you do not have control over in the future.
Succession planing[/i][/b][/i][/b]
Succession planning ensures that there are highly qualified people in all positions, not just today, but tomorrow, next year, and five years from now.
How Succession Planning Helps
Succession planning establishes a process that recruits employees, develops their skills and abilities, and prepares them for advancement, all while retaining them to ensure a return on the organization's training investment. Succession planning involves:
In the past, succession planning typically targeted only key leadership positions. In today's organizations, it is important to include key positions in a variety of job categories.
With good succession planning, employees are ready for new leadership roles as the need arises, and when someone leaves, a current employee is ready to step up to the plate. In addition, succession planning can help develop a diverse workforce, by enabling decision makers to look at the future make-up of the organization as a whole.
The results will undoubtedly include:
Definition:
Succession planning is a process whereby an organization ensures that employees are recruited and developed to fill each key role within the company. Through your succession planning process, you recruit superior employees, develop their knowledge, skills, and abilities, and prepare them for advancement or promotion into ever more challenging roles.
Through your succession planning process, you also retain superior employees because they appreciate the time, attention, and development that you are investing in them. To effectively do succession planning in your organization, you must identify the organization’s long term goals. You must hire superior staff.
You need to identify and understand the developmental needs of your employees. You must ensure that all key employees understand their career paths and the roles they are being developed to fill. You need to focus resources on key employee retention. You need to be aware of employment trends in your area to know the roles you will have a difficult time filling externally.
Why the new interest in succession?
The forces that have renewed interest in succession systems and have changed them in dramatic ways are trends that have affected business in the new global economy. Leadership is and has always been a relatively scarce commodity within companies. To lose a strong, effective leader is a serious blow to any organisation.
Companies reward high performers with opportunities for development and not necessarily extended, long-term employment. The internet has enhanced the mobility of leadership talent, making it easy for employees to find opportunities elsewhere and for those opportunities to come knocking on their door. Executive recruiters and headhunters today possess greater clout and sophistication. No longer is it unfair game to recruit your competitor’s best and brightest workers. Non-stop, unpredictable organisational change has caused organisations to quickly identify growing gaps in talent and emerging needs for new types of talent.
Best practice in succession management
Our research has found that ‘succession savvy’ corporations possess several traits that characterise their winning approaches to succession management. First, their succession systems are easy to use. Winning systems are non-bureaucratic, uncomplicated processes – with a unified approach to ensure consistency and maintain objectivity across business units, organisational levels and geographic areas.
The best systems are developmentally oriented, rather than simply replacement oriented. The system becomes a proactive vehicle for managers and executives to reflect on the progress of their talent and the opportunities they require for genuine development. Highly effective systems always actively involve the very top players in the organisation. Senior executives view effective succession management as a critical strategic tool for attracting and retaining talent.
Best practice succession systems are also effective at spotting gaps in talent and identifying important lynchpin positions – the select set of jobs that are critical to the overall success of the organisation. Succession planning does the job of monitoring the succession process, enabling the company to ensure that the right people are moving into the right jobs at the right time and that gaps are being spotted early on.
The most successful systems are built around continual reinvention. Best practice companies continually refine and adjust their systems as they receive feedback, monitor developments in technology and learn from other leading organisations. Where old systems were characterised by complete confidentiality and secrecy, today’s systems actually encourage involvement by individuals who are participants and candidates. Under older systems, few participants knew where they actually stood in terms of their potential for career opportunities ahead.
Developmental activities
Developmental activities do not dramatically differ from one best practice organisation to the next. In every case, these companies invest the majority of their time and resources in top-tier (executive) talent. There are four major common factors in how best practice organisations engage their current and future leaders in developmental activities:
1. They believe that the most important developmental activity is job assignments or work experience, so they spend considerable time balancing the organisation’s need to fill vacant positions with assignments that will help key people grow and develop their potential.
2. They use a variety of developmental activities including mentoring, coaching, job rotation, traditional educational programs and formalised feedback processes.
3. They try new approaches to development, including special assignments, action learning and web-based educational activities.
4. They find that computer-based technology has expanded their ability to effectively monitor developmental activities.
Internal leadership and executive education
Best practice organisations all have formal internal programs in place that focus on the further development of their top-tier executives. Dell Computer, for example, focuses most of its development activities on the global corporate talent pool that houses its top talent, identifying its best and brightest and holding business unit leaders accountable for carrying out whatever developmental actions are designated for those future stars. Most best practice companies agree that the vast majority of real learning employees encounter takes place on the job. Consequently, most of these companies have a special assignments or action learning program in place.
One of the most common and effective approaches is a taskforce assignment based on real and significant issues confronting the organisation. High-potential employees at Bank of America are assigned a specific enterprise topic to study and present findings to senior leaders. The company’s Six Sigma efforts also help place these top performers on highly quantifiable and large impact projects. Best practice organisations all participate in mentoring and coaching programs, but typically on an informal basis. Formal coaching is usually reserved for top executive high potentials and is commonly outsourced.
Trends in succession management
There are several critical trends that will further strengthen the transformation of succession management from a replacement tool to a development and leadership capability tool, thereby ensuring that systems and processes are responsive and less bureaucratic.
Succession planning will continue to become more integrated into the everyday life of organisations, moving from a formal ‘annual event’ to become a part of the daily fabric of doing business.
Technology will also integrate succession processes into the desktop computers of managers. A single icon will grant immediate and widespread access to succession planning information.
Additionally, all of the components of HR management are being looked at, appropriately, as fully integrated, aligned systems, rather than as a set of disconnected activities. Gone is the silo mentality that kept HR from other business units. The hyper-competition of the contemporary world makes such an approach outdated and dangerous to the bottom line.
Technology can improve planning
To increase access to and use of succession planning, best practice organisations continue to use technology as a critical facilitator of the process. Web-based succession planning systems enable companies to run their process online and ensure continuous access to data. Employees can then take ownership of their own development plans through their own desktops. While subjectivity will always be part of candidate assessment, great progress has been made toward more objective assessments, including 360-degree feedback.
As the use of raters expands, the array of raters will broaden to include administrative staff, support staff, internal and external customers. Best practice organisations will increase their efforts at training line managers and executives to perform more objective assessments when providing 360-degree feedback.
In conclusion, successful succession management is not a static target. Outstanding practices stay outstanding by continuously refining and adapting to meet changing circumstances.