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Tips: Succession Planning
Identifying the right people to fill key roles within your organisation either now or in the future will enable you to develop their knowledge and skills and abilities to prepare them for promotion and give them even more challenging roles. It will help you retain team members as they will understand and appreciate the time, attention and development you have invested in them. Successful succession planning will allow you to identify where you have no people as successors - the gaps - for key roles.
To effectively carry out succession planning in your organisation:
1. You must identify the organisations long term goals – recognise your organisational culture and understand if it will need to change in the future.
2. Focus on the “what” you want to achieve through the succession plan not the “who” and consider the potential successors on their individual merits and not because they remind you of yourself.
3. Start to plan early so you can weigh all options and make the right decisions for your company.
4. Identify what talents and skill sets will be needed to continue to lead the organisation in the future.
5. To search out your high potentials and high performers – look for employees who have strong talents and skills to help the business grow.
6. You need to understand and identify the development needs of your team members and make sure the right employees with the right aspirations are ready for key roles now and in the future.
7. You must ensure that all team members understand their career paths and roles they are being developed to fill.
8. You need to focus resources on key employee retention.
9. Understanding your business/employment trends to know which roles in the future might be difficult to fill externally.
10. Extend succession plans as far down the chain as possible and encourage people to step in for others during vacations to build on your organisations expertise.