Succession planning is a consistent management exercise which is required in any part of the business. The management identifies the critical staff in the business needs back up employment and cannot be left unattended. The whole idea is to find potential candidates for the crucial role in the future by searching them internally. Once they are identified, they are brought forward to the management and trained for future responsibility.
The main features of succession planning are:
Identifying the Need
Succession planning exercise needs the company first to identify the key staff that is at the risk of losing or leaving. The key staffs are the people in the company making the company successful and productive. These staffs generally the top level managers, acquirers, or client management. The loss of any of these key personnel may affect the company growth, and hence, it is essential for the company management to keep an eye on their ongoing jobs. The necessary personnel may leave the company for any reason. Identification of the critical job people is done by way of studying their performance reports, their work details, and past jobs performed. This exercise is a formal business exercise which needs the involvement of HR and management.
Listing the Potential Candidates
Once the company management has identified the key personnel who needs replacement, the listing of potential candidates starts. This is done by studying the HR reports on the productivity of the staff. The staffs with similar education background, workforce handling, and similar skill set are the most probable ones to get the job. By studying the needs of the job detail, the staff of the companies is evaluated. Succession planning is done with the objective to replace the key personnel in the company with the rightful candidate. Hence, this exercise is essential. This requires extensive study from the HR and interviews of the candidates.
Strengthen Internal Staffing
The main benefit of succession planning is to strengthen the company internally. By picking up the employee within the company, structure does not only save the company from the time of training but also provide development opportunity to the employees internally. The staffs picked for future roles internally, which is good for the company morale and keeps the competition among the employees healthy. The managers can ask the staff to self identify for jobs and prepare to be productive for a better future.
Training and Development
Once the company has identified the critical staff position and proper candidate for the job, the next step comes for the management to train the candidate properly. Finding the new staff for the vital job position does not mean that the candidate has to be recruited right away. In fact, the company management studies and watch the candidate for some time. They train the candidate to handle the future important roles to which he will entrust to. The opportunities for training and developing staff for the critical position is entrusted with the top-level managers in the company. The candidate must understand the business entirely and should be able to run the future role with great responsibility.
