Need help with your companies succession planning? Want to perfectly access your company’s job requirements? Or do you want to access the skills of potential or existing employees? Well, we’ve put this post together just for you.
For any company, succession planning is very important. In fact, it’s an essential component of a company’s broader human resource planning. If carried out correctly and it’s effective, succession planning offers lots of benefits. Furthermore, it gives a company’s employees a self-esteem boost.
This is due to the fact that they’ll know what’s required of them by the company. For managers, it’s beneficial as it helps them develop the right talent for key company positions. Furthermore, the talent will be aware of the company’s objectives or goals.
But what exactly is succession planning? Before looking at the steps involved, let’s start by looking at what a succession plan is.
What Is Succession Planning?
So what is it? Well, it’s a strategy businesses use to ensure they identify and develop future leaders. In most cases, succession plans are put in place to help tackle actions like employees;
- Retiring
- Quitting
- Being Fired
- Dying
- Getting Sick
Think of succession plans as a contingency for companies to better prepare for the future. This type of plan basically involves identifying and training current employees. This is done to ensure that they’ll be ready for promotions in key company positions. What this does is help companies find the ideal candidate for their key position. Most importantly, it guarantees that key positions won’t be vacant in case something bad happens. This way, a company can relax knowing they’ll run smoothly regardless of what happens. With that, below are five steps that’ll help you perfect your business succession plan.
Step 1: Identify Key Positions
One of the main reasons why businesses have succession planning is to protect key positions. Hence, the first step in any perfect succession plan is identifying a company’s key positions. Many companies are not able to function properly if their key positions are affected. It’s not surprising to find a company failing to meet its objectives due to issues with its key position.
With this, the key question is how can you point out key positions in your company? There are a few things you can do. For starters, you can make use of workforce demographic analysis or projection data. These two, if you do it correctly, will help you identify your company’s key positions. Likewise, you can carry out a risk assessment. When carrying out a risk assessment, consider comparing it to current and future vacancies in your business. This way, you’ll be able to identify key positions within your business with more certainty.
Step 2: Establish Selection Criteria For Key Positions
Once you’ve identified key positions, the next step is establishing selection criteria. To do this properly, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of the company’s needs. In other words, you’ll need to understand what’s needed for the company to be successful. This particular step is very important because of two things. One, it helps in setting clear performance expectations. Two, it helps in assessing performance by employees. Additionally, it helps in guiding learning and setting development plans. Some of the things you can focus on in this particular step are;
- Using key leadership competencies profile
- Informing current employees of key positions and what they entail
- Identify relevant skills, knowledge and competencies needed to achieve the company’s goals
Conducting this step effectively helps employees know what’s required of them. This includes the responsibilities of employees who hold key positions in a company. Carrying out this step effectively involves taking into account things like qualifications. Technical and behavioural competencies should also be looked at during this step.
Step 3: Identify Potential Candidates For Key Position
The third step is determining employees who have the potential to take up a key position. Not only should they have potential but should also have the will to take up a key position. There are several ways you can go about doing this. For starters, you can be able to do this by getting to know current and future employees.
Getting to know your employees involves engaging them on career plans and interest. You can as well make use of different human resource strategies. This includes developing internal talent pools. Recruitment and on-boarding are also ideal in this step and your quest for a perfect succession planning. Once you’ve narrowed down your list, you can now settle on an ideal candidate.
Once you’ve settled on ideal candidates, work to make them ready for the post. You can do this by offering a mentoring program or mentoring relationship. You can as well offer training and job shadowing. If you do this correctly, your potential candidates can easily develop new skills. Even better, they’ll be able to better or refine their existing skills.
Step 4: Develop & Implement Succession Plans
Once you’ve identified relevant strategies, the next step is documenting them in an action plan. This plan will give you a mechanism for clearly defining timelines. Additionally, it helps to define the roles and responsibilities of key positions. For this step, remember to incorporate strategies for learning, training and development. Your strategies should also touch on the transfer of a company’s corporate knowledge. For this, you can encourage current employees to pass on corporate knowledge. This way, the flow of knowledge will be smooth flowing.
Step 5: Evaluate Effectiveness
The final step in coming up with perfect succession planning is evaluating its effectiveness. In particular, you want to evaluate how successful the succession plan is. By doing so, you’ll be able to know well in advance if the plan will be successful. You can evaluate its effectiveness by systematically monitoring workforce data. Additionally, you should evaluate activities as well as make necessary adjustments.
Need assistance perfecting your company’s succession planning? Get in touch with Guthrie Taylor. There have a team of experts and professionals ready and happy to assist you. You can contact them by dialling 08 8431 9888.
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