Succession Planning in HR Management

What is Succession Planning?

Succession planning focuses on identifying potential leaders and high performers, to help them develop for their future advancement within their organisation.

As an organisation grows, it becomes more cost-effective to prepare existing employees for key positions compared to onboarding new talents. By providing employees a clear path forward with a succession plan, it improves employee engagement and retention within the company. More importantly, qualified employees who already recognise the organisation fills the void left by previous leaders.

In the long run, a succession plan can also reduce an organisation’s turnover rate. Valuable employees are unlikely to leave when the organisation recognises their leadership potential and gives them the opportunity to excel in their career. With that said, a succession plan serves to help organisations choose and develop the right people for leadership roles.

It’s especially important to HR managers as they are the decision makers who can make or break a team’s productivity and performance, so choosing the right leader is crucial for long-term success. The organisation itself will be able to gain benefits from a formal, thoughtful succession plan such as:

• Better career development
• Increased employee engagement
• Higher performance rate
• Increase employee retention

Now that we’re more familiar with succession planning and its purpose, here are 7 steps you can take to successfully fill your organisation’s key positions:

1. Identify Key Positions

Start the succession planning process by identifying qualifications that are essential to your company’s success. This could include years of experience, qualifications or licenses, or other ‘soft skills’ that have an impact on company success such as customer relations abilities.

2. Identify Needs

In this step, you can take a top-down approach by starting from your CEO to executive leadership and move down the organisational chart.

3. Develop Job Profiles

Have a clear job-profile in place. An effective job profile consists of its tasks, level of qualification it requires, and additional skills it may require.

4. Start The Recruiting Process

Approach your recruiting process from several angles such as, building up your talent pool, implementing an employee referral program, and also offer specific skill-set programs for existing employees.

5. Appointing A ‘Successor’

Ask questions such as who will be promoted when the opportunity arises. Avoid listing one successor as it can be problematic if that person doesn’t want to take up the position or has plans to leave the company, so consider having a list of candidates with the help of other leaders or hiring managers within the company.

6. Hand Over The Job

If the process is properly prepared for, it has room to loop in the person who’s leaving the role. During the handover process, the employee will gradually learn their new tasks from their future team and predecessor.

7. Document The Transition

Document the transition for how the position was filled and to inform future processes. Make sure to bear in mind the following:

• The demands of this particular position
• Processes that were carried out during the handover
• Issues faced during the handover
• Gaps that still potentially exist

In the future, this will help optimise your recruiting process and succession planning strategies for similar roles that may become available. For more insight and tools on succession planning, feel free to get in touch with us here.