Succession Planning Report. Recruit and Identify Employees to Succeed Key Employees.

Description

Succession Planning establishes a process that helps HR Professionals proactively recruit and develop employees who will one day succeed key employees in the organisation. Succession Planning Reports identify key employees, their potential successors, as well as the skills that those successors have and still need to develop in order to be promoted into the new position.

Business Case

Succession Planning is one of the most important HR activities in large organisations, as it helps define the future make-up of the organisation and assure that there will be a continuity of leadership and vision as executive management changes. Succession Planning Reports support this process by helping HR Professionals focus on the departments and divisions that require support by either identifying successors or providing training and management opportunities to potential successors who are still not ready to assume the principal position.

Required Data

Key Employee Field
Successors

Sample

Implementation Considerations

There are many considerations that can be taken into account when defining the succession planning report.  In fact, multiple succession planning reports may be desirable. Some metrics are listed below. Your HumanConcepts Professional Services Consultant can work with you to define calculations that take into account the available data and your business needs.

Key Employees

Example: SVP, Product Design; Database Administrator, Online Store.
Most organisations identify key employees and their successors at the executive level, but fail to bring the process down to the senior management level, where employee turnover is often higher, as is specialized industry and product knowledge. Leading organisations have begun the process of extending succession planning processes to lower levels in the organisation in an effort to stem the loss of critical knowledge in the event that senior managers leave.

Bench Strength

Example: 1, 2, 3 – number of identified successors who are ready
Bench strength communicates how many successors have been identified for each key employee (position), and whether those employees are ready to assume the position. Most organisations include the bench strength metric in their succession planning reporting. Larger organisations prefer to maintain bench strength of 2-3 people per key position. Smaller organisations usually find it difficult to identify more than 1-2 successors for a position.

Competencies

Example: Product Knowledge, technology patent-holder
Most organisations identify required competencies for each key position and grade potential successors against these competencies. Successors are considered ready when they have achieved a minimum required level of competency. Common examples include an ability to lead a large or diverse team, an ability to communicate a vision for the product or an ability to negotiate contracts with key vendors and customers.