Imagine one of your C-suite executives suddenly leaving the organisation. Even if they serve a notice period, this gives very little time to find a suitable replacement for them. Further, the person placed in these roles can take months to actually become effective and productive in this role. This poses a major challenge that plagues many businesses.
The solution is to opt for the HR succession planning process to help identify and train your next leadership team.
Hiring externally, businesses often pay those in leadership positions 15% more than they would have paid for an internal promotion. Yet, even among the leading global businesses, 26% of CEOs are being hired externally. A better way to go is to take up succession planning, a process that helps identify the best-suited workers for a leadership role.
Let’s take a look at the top tips that one must follow for effective succession planning.
Top Tips for Effective Succession Planning
In the UK, 80% of all businesses are facing a severe dearth of appropriately trained employees to meet leadership gaps. Yet, it is striking to see that only 17% of them are taking a proactive and strategic approach to succession planning. For a successful and effective succession planning process, the key tips to follow include:
1. Identifying Key Roles and Skills Gaps
CEO, CFO, and other C-suite positions are not the only roles that require a succession plan. Any key managerial role that can create a leadership vacuum if it falls vacant requires a succession plan. Further, the people placed in the succession pipeline for this role should be adequately trained so that they take the least amount of time to become effective.
2. Starting Early and Making It Ongoing
The succession planning process needs to be an ongoing task that does not stop when a role gets filled. This helps maintain a stream of trained people who can take over a role any time there is a vacancy. Further, organisations need to have a succession plan early on to ensure business continuity at all times.
3. Creating a Talent Pipeline Internally
For businesses, it is best to have a stream of skilled and trained people available from their present talent pool, establishing an internal pipeline of succession. This helps devise a career path for your existing employees and motivates them to do better.
4. Assessing and Developing Potential Successors
Once you have identified the employees with the most potential to succeed in a leadership role, it is time to assess their skills. Then, based on the demands of their potential role, enroll them in L&D programs to help grow their skills.
5. Integrating Succession with Performance Management
The basis of identifying who your top performers are lies in how well your staff performs in their given role. Thus, a best practice to follow includes integrating performance management with succession planning to pinpoint staff who are best suited to leadership roles.
6. Using Technology to Support Planning
The use of succession planning software can help provide essential metrics for every employee. This helps get a clear idea of which employees are the top performers, their skills, and the training they need to succeed in a leadership role.
7. Communicating Transparently
Training one employee for a role, yet promoting another, could lead to friction. Thus, there should always be transparent communication regarding which employees are eligible for a role and where each employee stands with respect to their training and eligibility.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Succession Planning
To ensure the efficacy of your HR succession planning process, it is best to avoid the following mistakes:
Overlooking Diversity and Inclusion
A diverse, inclusive leadership is the best way to grow your business. With a non-inclusive team, you can miss out on key insights from different perspectives. Thus, these are two criteria that are a must when selecting people from your talent pool for succession planning.
Relying Solely on Tenure or Seniority
The senior-most employees are not always the best choice when creating a talent pipeline for succession planning. It is best to consider employees serving different tenures since this can bring a fresh perspective to the table, helping the business reach its milestones early.
Not Testing Successors in Real Scenarios
Simply training the chosen employees to serve in leadership roles is not enough. These employees should be presented with real-life scenarios that help test their readiness for the role. This will root out the ones who are best prepared for the challenges a leadership role can pose.
Final Thoughts: Ensuring Effective Succession Planning
Succession planning is not a one-and-done process. Leadership positions fall vacant from time to time owing to people leaving the organisation due to retirement or better opportunities. Thus, an effective succession planning process is taken up at all times, following the tips that help maximise its efficacy.
Thorough with the top tips for the succession planning process? Try out succession planning for your business.
