13.3 Employee Development: Part One – Succession Planning

An employee development program is a process developed to help people manage their careers, learn new things, and take steps to improve personally and professionally. Employee development is vital for the long term viability of any organization. Most organizations will pursue employee development on at least two fronts – succession planning and employee personal development. Here we will look at succession planning in the workplace.

Succession planning is key to the success of organizations. An organization should always be concerned with the growth and development of its next generation of leaders. This is sometimes referred to as an organization’s “bench strength”, meaning who is ready and up next to take on a role within your business. Because this development unfolds over many years, succession planning has to be a constant priority for HR managers and Senior Management. It usually takes 20 years to develop the CEO of a large organization, so one must start early and be very proactive to ensure that the pipeline of leadership talent for top positions is healthy. Remember how the success of Apple was so closely tied to its charismatic CEO, Steve Jobs, and how his untimely death in 2011 created much speculation as to the future of the company?  It turns out that Apple did not miss a beat with its successor, Tim Cook, and is now one of the most profitable companies in the world with a market capitalization of $2 trillion! The development of Tim Cook as a successor of Steve Jobs did not occur overnight. Cook was carefully groomed, along with many others, to succeed Jobs just like the potential successor of Cook is currently being groomed at Apple.

Terminology

Becoming familiar with some of the terminology surrounding succession planning, such as career planning and career management is helpful.

• Career Planning focuses on the employee and their career interests. An organization would provide the individual with development options that align with their individual goals.
• Career Management focuses on the business objectives of the organization. The goal is to create positions and structures that support these business objectives.
• Succession Planning focuses on the future. It involves the identification of skills and abilities needed to perform jobs within the organization and developing a pipeline of people to fill these roles.
• Replacement Planning involves the identification of employees that would be suitable replacements for open roles in key areas of the operation.
• Training focuses on an individual’s current role and provides them with the skills, ability and knowledge to perform their job.
• Development focuses on the long-term game to prepare employees for roles and responsibilities they will take on in the future.

Factors to Take into Consideration

Let’s review some key factors an organization should consider as they develop their succession plan. Have you defined the scope of your succession plan program? Will you only identify potential candidates, or will you also identify specific roles that are perfect training grounds for future job candidates? It is also important to reflect on the candidates you will choose to take part in your program. Based on conversations with their managers, you will want to select individuals that are considered flexible, adaptable, eager to learn new skills and can handle change.

In addition to identifying the right participants, your organization will need to identify the right positions to build your talent pipeline. Think about positions in your organization that align with the goals of the company, have the greatest impact on sales and service, are highly specialized in your industry, and require a long time to develop such as a lead quality auditor.

Have you brought together the right team to implement this succession planning program? You will want to include subject matter experts, leaders, organizational development specialists and human resources as these individuals know about developing people, adult learning, performance management and mentorship. Your team will also need to decide what success looks like. How will you know if your succession plan is working? You will need to determine if the necessary skills have been acquired and if you have a strong group of internal candidates in the talent pipeline ready to fill future roles.

Succession Planning Obstacles

While we want to focus on the positives of succession planning, being aware of the possible challenges allows the implementation team to plan for and mitigate such obstacles. Leadership Support is essential to the success of any internal program. Do your leaders understand the skills gaps, the staffing shortages, the competition to hire candidates and why your organization needs to build a talent pipeline? Ensuring you have leadership buy-in will help launch your succession planning program forward and draw the attention of prospective internal candidates.

Resistance to Change is yet another challenge to overcome. This resistance to change could come from your leaders and/or your employees. The fear of the unknown can sideline a program. This is your opportunity to communicate the purpose of the program, including alignment with organizational goals and creating a pipeline of internal talent.

Departmental Resistance can be expected. You are asking departmental managers to let some of their best talent join your succession planning program. It is natural for a manager to be hesitant and protect their talent. It will be extremely important to ensure that your departmental managers understand the overall goals of the organization and that every department must participate in building the company’s talent pipeline.

“Employee Development” in Human Resources Management – 2nd Ontario Edition by Elizabeth Cameron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.