Nikoletta holds an MSc in HR management and has written extensively about all things HR and recruiting.
Effective succession planning is a company’s insurance policy for sustainability. This becomes clear when critical positions become vacant. A good succession plan means there’ll always be a talented and properly trained employee who can take over before operations fall into disarray.
Often, the succession planning process is way down a company’s list of priorities. But critical roles are hard to fill. All businesses need to be ready to respond to employee departures, both planned (like retirements) and unexpected (like career changes).
Related: A poorly thought-out or non-existent succession plan in your organization could contribute to the glass cliff. What’s a glass cliff? Read more and find out.
Here is a comprehensive guide to help you build an effective succession plan:
Imagine you’re a football coach. Before a big game, one of your most valuable players announces they’re leaving the team. Do you have players sitting on the bench who have the skills, maturity and motivation to take their place? Well, you should. Succession planning ensures that each key role vacancy will be passed on to an appropriate employee.
Key roles may be leadership positions of any ranking, highly specialized roles or important operations positions. Companies can identify internal talent and prepare (in other words “groom”) them to assume key positions, should the need arise. Succession planning isn’t the same as replacement planning because it doesn’t just focus on temporary solutions. It’s a mechanism to counteract turnover and uncertainty, a way for teams to continue operating successfully in the long-term, even when key players leave.
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Get to know the ground rules:
Recruitment is always important and it’s worth investing in expertise, efficient processes and technology. However, it’s sometimes better to look internally to fill a position. It can help cut recruitment costs and avoid spending valuable time onboarding. If you promote from within, you’d be filling a critical position with someone who already knows your company’s history, objectives and vision. And it supports retention and enhances employee engagement by demonstrating that you value your employees and want to give them opportunities for advancement.
Ensure you’ll make the most out of your plan by considering the following tips:
Especially in small businesses, there’s a tendency to overlook formal processes for succession planning. But a formal process promotes consistency and can be communicated more easily to everyone involved. It’ll support visibility and effectiveness. Don’t aim for a rigid process though. Guidelines can be more useful for people to reference.
Companies use succession plans when incumbents retire, get promoted or pursue new opportunities. Communicating those plans ahead of time can positively impact your employees. Employees (and potential employees) will see you invest in talent. Trust and loyalty will be enhanced. It may also help morale remain high as they won’t have to worry about what’ll happen if a leader leaves.
Succession planning used to be just for executives. But just focusing on executives means you could overlook people in other key positions. It’s important to have more than just a CEO succession planning process. After all, lower level employees are more involved with everyday operations than the C-suite or board of directors.
Succession plans don’t work without training plans. People who can fill critical positions now may have outdated skills by the time succession rolls around. Likewise, people who may not be ready to fill certain positions yet might be the best choices after the right training and coaching. The succession planning process flow should be developed alongside training plans. Try to train employees for future roles as well as their current role.
Large businesses have a wide range of internal choices to fill positions. Smaller companies may sometimes need to turn to the outside world to build their positions’ talent pipelines. You can create an external pool of talent by always looking for great candidates. For example, you can interact with key people on social networks to build rapport and then reach out when succession issues arise.
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If employees gain a lot of skills, there’s good chance they’ll be able to advance to critical positions. Succession planning process steps like mentoring, shadowing and job rotation to foster a culture of continuous learning and development.
Not all employees will agree with your plans to place them in the critical position you have in mind. They may have other plans. Don’t indiscriminately include people in your succession planning. Talk to them about their career goals before critical positions become vacant. Otherwise, you may have to start looking for a successor from scratch in a time crunch.
Although you can anticipate and plan for retirement and promotions, people may leave their positions unpredictably. In these cases, replacement plans can help. Replacement plans don’t really need training plans or talent pipelines like succession plans. But it’s important to identify a couple of people that can step in and save the day. Look for people who can act as interims until you find a real successor.
What are the five levels of succession planning? In order to be successful, a company needs leadership succession plans in place. These can include management succession planning for when the current leader steps down or retires; ownership successor selection processes determining who will take over as CEO along with other top positions within an organization's hierarchy such that they are capable of running it efficiently while also being able to find replacements if necessary. Should employees be involved in succession planning? To prepare for the future, it is essential to involve your employees in planning. They should expect changes and be ready with an open mind about what those might look like going forward--including increased communication from their leaders as well feedback sessions on how things are going at work each week/month as the changes take place, alongside any new roles or responsibilities laid out for their needs. Which model is most commonly used in succession planning? The 'robust' succession planning model is a process by which groups of talent are identified who all have the potential to be promoted.
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