Succession Planning Consulting

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Succession Planning

Succession Planning is the process of identifying and preparing suitable individuals who are capable and willing of assuming higher and broader responsibilities and/or directly replacing key organizational players as their terms expire. This is accomplished through a careful and considered plan of action ensuring the least possible disruption to the individuals involved, their responsibilities and therefore the organization’s effectiveness.

With a successful Succession Planning process, HR business partners or business heads will be able to answer the following questions for organizational workforce readiness.

• Have successors been identified for critical roles?
• Is there a pool of talent for those critical roles?
• Who are the high performers in different regions and functions?
• Who needs to be watched, who are the rising stars, those who are about to derail and those who are underperforming yet have high potential?
• Are the right development activities and resources available?
• Where is the organization at risk and what human capital strategies need to be put in place?
• Can successors with specific skills and career aspirations be identified?
• Can we identify individuals who are willing to re-locate or travel?

Organizations must ensure that they have a pool of potential “ready now” successors – those leaders able to move into a critical position and perform at an acceptable level. The outcome of an effective succession planning process is an organization that has fully prepared a pool of potential candidates to back-fill for critical positions, which in turn reduced or mitigates the strategic risk of a leadership capacity gap.

Methodology

Business requirements must be identified and analyzed, organizational processes reviewed and re-designed if required, and the process and technology interaction points identified and scoped. Outputs include process documentation created by the Consultant, functional specifications and project plans created by the Business Analyst and Project Manager. The following elements should be examined:

• Existing succession planning process
• Organizational and functional structure
• Scope of present succession planning process
• Identification of critical positions
• Examination of existing role profiles and competency framework
• Identification of how organizational objectives are communicated and cascaded
• The purpose and functionality of the Development Resources and the Managers Tools
• The process flow between the individual and the line manager -- communication and content
• The approval or authorization process and hierarchical view of results required

Technology

iSuccession as part of the Insala Solution Suite supports this methodology by identifying potential successors for skilled incumbents, at all levels. It enables organizations to implement and manage a variety of self-service or HR driven data collection processes. After implementation, the succession planning software will generate the type of reports required by the organization. As a result iSuccession allows HR business partners to gather and store data to identify succession planning needs, run scenarios, search for high performing individuals with potential, and view new organization charts. The module consists of:

• Development Resources - these resources enable employees to build a portfolio of development activity planning and identify career interests and accomplishments for future reference within the organization.
• Career Talk - connects employees with career coaches, administrators, other colleagues and resources within the organization or as part of a defined career development initiative or succession planning process.
• Managers Tools - is designed to prepare managers for development discussions and view all the entries made by their direct reports into their talent inventory, bio builders, learning plans (and competency assessments if used). Managers are also able to validate performance and potential ratings if so required by the organizations talent management process.
• Talent Manager - this tool in the Administration portal enables organizations to identify suitable successors for key roles. The search function allows all the data entered by employees and their line managers to be filtered so that a list of potential successors can be identified for an incumbent. Potential successors can also be shown in a performance and potential matrix. This information forms the basis for discussion in the organization’s Talent Management or Succession Planning process.

Benefits

Implementing a Succession Planning methodology allows organizations to:

• develop a clear profile of the pool of human resource skills/competencies necessary for future growth and competitive pressures including strengths and gaps
• assess talent bench strength for important business decisions – make decisions based on "real" skill/competency performance
• identify skill gaps and provide developmental activities that will focus on needed skills/competencies
• provide online access globally.

Managers can:

• assess an individual’s skills/competencies in relationship to present organizational needs
• develop individuals and create career and Learning Plans/paths appropriate to the organization's goals

Individuals are able to:

• assess their own skills/competencies in an objective manner and identify gaps between current skills/competencies and those required for present and future objectives
• based on skill/competency strengths, determine other positions/career options that might be of interest

Implementing a Succession Planning methodology supported by technology contributes to the organization’s success by:

• improving the talent pipeline
• developing a competitive workforce
• ensuring critical positions can be filled as quickly as possible when vacancies exist