An organization is structural in the sense that many departments come together to achieve the vision.
Succession planning is the process of identifying the critical positions within your organization and developing action plans for individuals to assume those positions.
Key elements of succession planning
- Defined goals
This will focus more to help employees increase their expertise, learn managerial skills, or something else.
- Tasks or requirements
This is essentially a list of requirements for what is needed in order to reach the end goal of the succession plan.
- Timeline
Knowing how much time employee development may take will help your organization align the succession plan with times when you need people to step into new roles.
- Budget
Define how much money or what resources you will dedicate to succession planning, as that will shape every other element of your organization’s plan
- Strategy
Finally, define how you plan to introduce, execute, and measure the results of a succession plan.
Steps towards a successful succession plan
It is a well-thought and deliberate process that involves the following steps:
- Identify key positions
Analyze business plans to identify the positions most critical for business growth.
- Identify potential successors
Establish the key competencies required to undertake these roles and the high potential employees that could step up and assume these positions.
- Determine when will the potential successors be ready
Recognize the timeframe of your successor’s readiness to take on the role. Are they ready to commence development now? In the short term? Or, in the long term?
- Determine what development needs they have
Determine the training and development required to fill skill gaps and prepare them for advancement. This can include mentoring, on-the-job training as well as external courses.
- Ensure an ongoing commitment
Managers in all parts of the organization should be continually identifying gaps in talent and focusing on the development of high performers.