[Effective Succession Planning]

Maintaining a strong talent base through effective succession planning is a

must for organizations to handle high employee turnover and leadership
changes. Companies that do not integrate succession planning into their
strategy are at a disadvantage and may risk losing their leadership edge once
their key figures retire. This white paper discusses the importance of succession
planning and explores some of the best practices followed by world-class
companies in succession planning.

Why Succession Planning?

As the workforce ages and economic challenges multiply, employee turnover

will rise and take its toll on the organization. In such circumstances, retaining
your existing talent base will become difficult. Without proper succession
planning, identifying the replacement employees will be complicated when the
key positions in the organizational hierarchy become vacant. It is also very
difficult to achieve the organization’s long term objectives in the absence of an
effective succession planning.

By following an effective succession planning strategy, you begin to identify

and monitor the most important positions in your company and make sure that
you have enough internal bench strength to fill those positions regularly over
time. This helps to avoid talent breakdown and ensure smoother functioning of
the organizational wheels.

Effective succession planning strengthens your workforce and greatly reduces

related HR management costs incurred. It also reduces unexpected resource
expenditure and unplanned discontinuity involved in hiring new talent in your
organization.

Effective Succession Planning – Best Practices

Incorporate Succession Planning into Your Organizational Culture. No
organization looking to build a long term competitive advantage can risk
neglecting the importance of talent management. Make sure that you integrate
succession planning into the company’s long term objectives. Spending hefty
amounts to fill vacant positions and allocating disproportionate financial
resources to train new employees can be more expensive than you thought in
the long term. While changing the organizational culture is not easy, the
potential payoff is worth it.
Identify and Monitor Your Talent Pool. Install a talent management suite to
track learning and performance management across the organization. Develop a
unified approach to identify, create and develop an enterprise-wide talent pool.
Maintain a database of all details of your talent base along with their
performance appraisal data.

Define the Outcomes of Your Succession Planning Strategy. You need to

think hard about what you wish to achieve from your succession plans. Talk to
your senior management, key decision-makers and make sure that everyone is
on board in planning the next generation of talent base to enable a smoother
workforce transition. The plan should be clear and unambiguous in defining the
objectives, monitoring the progress and measuring the success. It should also
be flexible enough to absorb any necessary updates and changes.

Integrate Succession Planning into Your Organizational Strategy. Identify

the long term objectives of your organizational strategy. How important is
talent in achieving those objectives? What kind of skills and talent do you
foresee to enable your organization to put that strategy into action? Have you
taken account of turbulent market forces in calculating the requirement of new
manpower, development of leadership and their smooth succession?
Understand the competencies and skill sets required to achieve your objectives
and develop enough bench strength.

Commit Your Players to the Success of Succession Planning. Most

companies falter in succession planning because all the key players of the
organization are not completely committed to the implementation and success
of succession planning management. Make sure that you have buy-in and
commitment from your key players and managers. Since manpower resources
are not easy to acquire, you need to devote extra time and energy to execute
your succession planning strategy.

Integrate Your HR Development and HR Training Plans with Succession

Planning Strategy. Once you have identified the key skills and competencies
required to achieve the organization’s long term objectives, make sure that your
HR development plans take into account the objectives of the organization’s
succession plans. Such an integrated approach will generate information on
how your HR development activities fare in creating and sustaining the future
workforce. It also helps to see how your development efforts pay off in terms
of talent enhancement and manpower development. Keep an eye on the
performance and progress of specific employees who show the potential as
future leaders.
 Involve All Groups in Succession Planning. Succession planning isn’t
something that needs to be pushed down the throats of HR department. Involve
HR department and also other relevant groups and personalities across the
organization. An effective talent development software suite will help to
facilitate such communication across the organization.

Update Your Succession Plans Regularly. Many succession planning

management strategies are left unchanged for many years in many
organizations. As the markets and other economic realities change, the
objectives of the companies and the means through which they will be achieved
will also undergo transformation. So the required skill sets and competencies
and succession planning objectives will also change radically. By updating
your succession plans regularly you get to keep an eye on the most important
positions of your company and relate them better to your new corporate
strategy. Without such regular revision of succession plans, you run the risk of
promoting a wrong employee and keep the right ones out of the loop.

Continually Focus on Employee Development. Many well-intended plans are

good at identifying the right talent but fail on employee development front.
After identifying the key skill sets and the required competencies, design
effective employee development programs to train your existing employees and
also to transform them into future-capable workforce. That way, you can easily
handle various challenges such as high attrition rates, employee turnover and
workforce development needs.

Keep Track of the Progress. Identify the key positions that are vital for the
smooth functioning of your organization and attainment of its strategic goals.
Make a list of skill sets and other core competencies required for these key
positions. Factor in company’s attrition rate and employee turnover to find out
the total bench strength needed to ensure effective succession. Now identify the
potential talent or recruit the newer ones with an eye on your future
requirements. Install employee training programs to develop the key skills and
competencies and measure its success with accurate metrics.

Conclusion

Identifying and developing a skilled workforce is necessary for the survival of

companies in these turbulent economic times. Hiring and on-boarding can be
expensive while the loss of key employees can derail your plans. Effective
succession planning is the only way to handle these challenges and improve the
organization’s resilience.