Succession planning is crucially planning for and strategizing smooth sailing transitions of head positions. This consists of executive search, recruiting top skilled workers, onboarding the new head, selection assessments, and successfully handling the changeover from the old leader to the new leader.
The HR managers play an important role in this process, as they find the person most suited for a particular role, who will contribute to the company’s growth in the long term.
The succession planning approach enables the HR manager to focus on what their company’s skilled workers could become some years down the line and establish strategies in which the top employee can get maximum exposure and have an individual development program.
Must read – Do’s and Don’ts for an effective succession planning
The main intention of succession planning is to ensure that a company has the right leader ready in case there is a sudden change.
If your company doesn’t have a plan in place, it might be hard for your company to recover if a top employee plans to resign. Though resigning might not only be a reason, if the leader is old enough, or prone to any illness, it can end up in unexpected termination.
While succession planning seems like a time consuming and tedious process, it is very essential for your company for the following reasons-
Identifies Future Top Leader-
Authorized succession planning demands your company to identify the positions or roles crucial to the success of the organization. Keep candidates or employees ready to take on those critical jobs when the time comes.
These steps in succession planning can lead to numerous benefits. You can spot the perfect candidate looking at your company’s charts, to understand the candidate’s vulnerability, weakness, and strong suits. Depending on their skills, you can cross-train them in a matter of urgency.
On the flip side, if you know there is no existing candidate who can fill the requirements of that role, you can start an early search to find someone who can handle the role seamlessly.
Most importantly, succession planning also helps in letting the top employees know that their hard work is being noticed and appreciated, which in turn gives the encouragement to work harder and also keep working with the company for a longer time.
Structured Training-
Once your organization has identified which all candidates are interested and qualified for the senior position; you can start grooming them for their future successes.
Some of the candidate’s professional evolution may come in the form of mentoring, coaching, or an increase in important responsibilities. Some roles may even require the candidate to go back to college to acquire professional certification or additional education.
Keeping an Eye Out-
Once your top candidates are being groomed, your organization has a chance to reap the benefits and thrive. This takes place when a junior is having a conversation with a senior about why they do things in a certain way.
The seamless procedure of explaining the state of affairs helps to reveal the weak points in procedures and processes, bare sales opportunities, and the chance for a positive change.
This procedure allows your organization to keep an extra set of eyes on the senior positions and promotes questioning of the work norms that have become inefficient or outdated.
Maintaining Brand Identity-
We frequently come across CEO’s who take over a new company and end up running the business to the ground within no time. Sadly, such tragedies end up in ruining the reputation of the company forever, or at least till a time when a new CEO makes it profitable again.
Such a situation occurs when the newly appointed CEO is not familiar with the working of the organization, its processes, and regulations. They don’t take it seriously as they are not attached to the brand or organization, so they fail to understand the fundamental missions and values.
Succession planning can help you in avoiding this disaster, by grooming an existing candidate of the company, who understand the importance and values of the brand, and will provide customer satisfaction as they have given their all to the company.
Beneficial In the Long Run-
Changes happen without any warning. When your organization knows its goals and where they want to see themselves, they can start planning ahead of the future. You can create a path for the retiring workers to hand off their knowledge to their successor. The goal of succession planning is to help you in growing your company by building plans for any vulnerability.
Therefore, succession planning is very crucial, because if the vulnerabilities are not processed properly, it can lead to the downfall of the company and damaging its reputation, which took years to build.
If done the virtuous way, it can encourage the employees to work harder, so that they are considered for the senior position. This also helps in retaining the employees for a long time as they end up investing a lot of time and hard work to obtain the senior position.
To learn more about how Pocket HRMS can help you plan HR and succession, follow our recent blogs here. Also, you can write to us at sales@pockethrms.com
