Succession Planning 
Succession planning is not simply about identifying people for the top leadership positions. SHL recognises that the effective management of succession involves building a pipeline of employees ready to step into various key job roles throughout an organisation. Having a clear view of existing talent is critical to achieving this.
Planning to succeed
As we face the retirement of the baby boomer generation, a Merrill Lynch survey revealed that most companies are concerned about this loss. What’s more, a survey of 587 IT executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit showed two-thirds expected it to become tougher to retain and recruit staff in the coming years.
With limited management succession plans in place, organisations are often unprepared for the impact of losing key employees. According to Bersin and Associates 51% of employers rate filling gaps in the leadership pipeline as either their number one or number two talent challenge.
In uncertain economic times, organisations need a pipeline of well-trained and motivated staff ready to move into key roles when the opportunity arises.
Those organisations that plan for succession:
- Have a clear strategic understanding of their future roles and skills requirements
- Share information across the different HR functions and business as a whole to feed the management succession plan
- Understand where talent lies within an organisation
- Look broadly and creatively at how to distribute internal talent in order to achieve the best person-job fit
- Have a clear view of who is in line to replace people that hold key company positions.
SHL provides consultancy services to help you effectively plan for succession why not call us to discuss your requirements?
Identifying existing talent
According to Deloitte, US companies on average spend nearly 50 times more on recruiting a $100k per annum professional than on their annual training when they come aboard. As recruitment budgets are cut it is vital that organisations maximise the talent that already exists through management succession planning and development.
So what steps can an organisation take to move towards this goal?
- Identify the key roles in an organisation. Which are the linchpin positions that are essential to company success?
- Evaluate talent to find key successors to these job roles considering:
- Potential: Measure candidate potential relevant to the role and organisation
- Behaviours: Understand the behaviours required for success in the role and assess the candidate against these
- Results: An organisation must define clear metrics for measuring success within a role
- Match people to the job role. If the talent required does not exist internally, recruit external candidates using the same talent evaluation processes
- Be transparent in your management succession processes
- Regularly measure progress.
Find out how SHL helped Fujitsu to better identify talent within the business and plan for succession
Effective succession planning with SHL
The Big Lottery Fund worked with SHL on a three-year best practice HR strategy, incorporating management succession planning activity. Its Deputy HR Director Jasvier Boyal said:
“The BIG competency framework, developed in partnership with SHL, has been fully integrated into recruitment, appraisal and employee development. This ensures that HR is aligning its processes to business needs and developing a framework to develop employee capability and management effectiveness.”
Read the full Big Lottery Fund case study
SHL delivers a flexible, tailored approach to each client’s succession planning requirements. A variety of consultancy services and assessment tools may be used including:
- Clearly defined competency frameworks that can integrate talent management and succession planning
- Occupational Personality Questionnaires to reveal personality traits and identify candidates with the right competencies
- 360 assessments to understand an individual’s behaviours and enable effective talent development decisions to be made
- Simulation Exercises to simulate real life workplace scenarios and uncover behaviour in different situations.
Contact us for advice on implementing Succession Planning in your business
