Succession planning is a process whose goal is to train employees to meet the organization’s future needs for talent. Sometimes to emphasize that it requires active and continuous effort and investment, it is also called Succession Management.
Succession planning can include everything that is designed to ensure the continuous and effective performance of the organization, department, or team. activities aimed at the cultivation, development, substitution, and application of strategies for key talents.”
To increase the strength of the bench within the organization, succession planning is usually part of the broad talent management. Talent management attracts good external talents through recruitment, retains good internal talents through effective incentive measures, and cultivates and develops good internal talents through targeted talent development measures.
Why Is Succession Planning Important?
The important reason is the aging of the labour force. Demographers have long been aware of the aging labour force caused by demographic changes. Labour economist Douglas Braddock once said, “In the ten years from 1998 to 2008, there will be more vacancies (34,700,000) due to replacement needs than those from economic growth (20,300,000)”.
Another important reason that forces succession planning to become more and more important is the increasing difficulty of recruiting qualified employees. Manpower found in a survey report of Talent Shortage Survey, that 44% of employers found it difficult to find employees with the required skills, especially when recruiting for the following positions :
- Sales Representative
- Engineer
- Nurse
- Technician
- Accounting
- Management Assistant and Personal Assistant (PA)
- Driver
- Supervisor of Customer Service Centre
- Mechanic
- Managers / Executives
The Goal Of Succession Planning
The goal is to build in-depth bench strength at all levels of the enterprise so that whenever there are any vacancies, there will be many qualified candidates inside. Available for selection. In most cases, organizations can realize that focusing on succession planning promotes sustainability of the organisation.
How To Apply A Talent Pool?
The talent pool is a collection of employees who are preparing for challenging positions. There are many ways to identify talent pool members. One method is to directly nominate the supervisor, and the other method is to apply objective evaluation, such as multi-person Omni-directional evaluation to identify employees with development potential. It is a good idea to contact a business growth specialist to help make these decisions with your best interests at heart.
The talent pool reflects the difference between replacement planning and succession planning. In the substitution plan, a single employee is usually used as a backup for a specific job and only this kind of promotion of “vertical” channels.
Conversely, in succession planning, supervisors at all levels can search for talents for positions one level higher in the entire organization. Therefore, the talent pool can be used to reserve talents for a certain level, rather than reserve talents for specific positions at a certain high level like the alternative plan.
Common Mistakes In Succession Planning
- Mistake 1: Assuming that employees’ success at a certain level can guarantee success at a higher level. An employee’s success at a certain level does not guarantee his/her success at a higher level. The reason is simple: each level requires different competencies. Therefore, it is important to distinguish between an employee’s current performance and future performance at a higher level.
- Mistake 2: Assume that the boss is a good candidate for judging who is worthy of promotion. The second mistake is to assume that the boss is usually a good candidate to judge who is worthy of promotion. But that is not the case. In the succession game, the boss is also an egoist, and whoever is promoted has a stake in them.
