Succession planning in practice

When choosing the right person for a succession plan there are two different approaches.  

You have the informal approach which mostly involves informal conversations with managers. This can then lead to skill development and knowledge transfer making a specific individual more suitable for a role. There also may an element of bias/subjectivity when internally promoting.  

On the other hand, you have the formal approach which is mostly done through performance review or personal development plans. Those identified as talent are then added to a "database" of talent and can either enter development pathways, or be invited to a future leaders programme. The company then has a pool of people ready to step up in the next 12-36 months and a clear plan to help them achieve their goals. 

This is in fact an ongoing process that aligns individual and company competencies and analyses, develop, and maintain a talent pool of professionals. This will help them to assure continuity of lead roles for all critical positions as and when needed. HR departments and business partners sit on the lead meetings, working in unison to identified business needs and participate in strategy sessions.

Here let us have a look at what exactly needs to be done to do succession planning.

• Understand the type of your organisation and key positions. Identify the needs of the organisation in the future and have a pool of talent ready to ensure growth of business in the right direction. What will the organisation look like in the future? What key roles need to be filled and what skills are needed? How will it be structured? What markets will you operate in?
• Job Profiles. You won't know exactly what the job will look like in the future, but you can put the basic elements in a job profile. Think skills, behaviours, responsibility, experience, perhaps location and cultural fit.
• Gap analysis. Assess your current work force. Who is capable and has the desire to develop into the future roles? Where are the gaps? Who is ready now and what can you do to retain them until the role emerges?
• Decide strategies for success planning. How will you identify talent? How do you do future workforce planning? How will you develop your people? Who will be responsible? What opportunities can you create through coaching, mentoring, projects or job shadowing? Would this platform be a support or would you invest in an industry qualification?
• Identify the strongest performers. Who are your rising stars and how will you retain them? What is their career vision and does it align with your future? How do they need, and want to develop? How will you capture this information?
• Go for deeper level discussions. Have conversations with your talent. You don't want standard interview answers. You want to really get to the nitty gritty of the person, their hopes, dreams and aspirations. Will they be the people to lead your legacy?
• Develop career pathways. Identify what skills, knowledge and behaviours are required for you key roles and establish career pathways to help talent to gain the experience.
• Allow employees to grow and develop laterally. Expand their skills, knowledge and insights in their current role or ask them about getting involved in cross functional projects, secondments or interim roles. Not all development is vertical, though you need to support this development too.
• Create an exit strategy: In the process of ensuring leadership continuity, creating an exit strategy is very important which assures smooth working of the organisation. 

One approach that is most common for succession planning is frameworks to consider who are your rising stars and who’s perform needs a little more attention. From this, successors can normally be identified.  

This tends to be integrated into existing frameworks already used by the business but can sometimes blur lines and make the process more confusing. This is because they are forcing people into boxes that might not have the right criteria or scope that is needed to make a truly informed decision.  

Ultimately, succession plans need to be clear, concise, consistent and fully aligned to the business goals and values. If this is not the case, then it needs to be reconsidered because culture has a large influence on the success an individual will have within a role.  

As conversations become more common between employee’s and their employer’s, succession planning has been more openly discussed. This not only creates a more open and trusting relationship with senior staff but also allows for all potential candidates to be considered as successors.  

This links back to the need for personal development. Employees want to feel empowered in their jobs. They want the opportunities to grow and develop. If this stops happening and they feel their succession training or skill development is not happening or seems uncertain, they could start looking for new roles.