Succession planning is the tradition which is being practiced for a long time. It is from the old times when Kings used to pass on their kingdoms to their successive heirs. And it’s even been followed nowadays. But in the business world, there is a slight change in the definition of succession planning.
Succession planning refers to the process of recognizing the next generation of leaders in the place of the key leaders who will move on to grab new opportunities or with the passage of time may pass on or retire. The difference in this definition is that the ownership is not transferred but only responsibilities and position.
This process is essential to ensure the continuity of the business. It is essential to practice to reduce future risk. This is a continuous process and involves various activities with the help of which employees are identified with the potential of becoming a future leader.
Objectives Of Succession Planning: –
- To ensure continuity: Building up an effective leadership team or developing it to mitigate the future crisis is the main objective of succession planning. This ensures the forward-looking approach of the organization and will ensure that the organization will face difficult times smoothly. This is because the human resource is considered as the most important resource as they have the skills and abilities to add in the other resources.
- To identify critical position: In the organization, it is important to identify the vacant positions and fill them immediately to prevent any loss of opportunity or to prevent an increase of burden on other employees. This vacant situation is known as a critical position. But with the help of succession planning, it is easy to face this critical situation. For example, you will identify some employees who have the potential to become future leaders and start training them for the same. So, when any senior employee will leave or vacate his post, then it’s easy to fill that position.
- To highlight the organization’s proficiency level: Another objective of succession planning is to highlight the proficiency or competency level. In this, it is easy to identify the skills which are required by the organization as it has already been acquired by the organization. This will help in the sustenance growth and development of the organization.
- To identify potential: By identifying the potential among the employees or improving that potential by providing them with training or development programs, future leaders can be built to secure your place at the time of future crises. Apart from this, it is necessary to identify this potential because every employee can’t become a leader even if provided with the training.
- To gain insights into the workforce: There is a need to keep a check on the valuable insights and the HR of the organization must check the same. He is supposed to check which employee is going to retire; which employee is not fit for the job; which employee has the potential to go upwards, which employees need training etc. The collection of such insights will be proved quite beneficial for the organization.
Importance Of Having Succession Planning In The Organization: –
- Avoid transition shortcomings: For any organization, vision and the core values of an organization must remain sustained. So, the succession planning helps in maintaining the same as it will augment your confidence in your new leaders you are building.
- Availability of HiPo employees (leaders): It will help you to identify and develop the employees having the potential to become future leaders. Hence, it’s very important to have insights into the capabilities of your employees and it will further benefit you to grab the right opportunity at the right time.
- Boosts retention and engagement: One of the important benefits of succession planning is that it improves the retention and engagement rate of the employees. This can be possible by helping the employees to understand the company’s values or missions and making them feel part of the company or organization.
- Competitive advantage: Succession planning will increase the competitive advantage among employees and simultaneously improve their quality or performance. Moreover, this will impart their focus on long-term opportunities rather than the upcoming opportunities.
- No lengthy critical situation: As the company will be focusing on honing the potential of employees to make them the successive heir of the positions of senior leaders. So, when any such type of critical situation arises, it won’t last long.
- Less expenditure: This is a less expensive process as compared to the hiring of an employee from outside the organization. For example, when hiring from outside, you will need to train that individual no matter how many years of experience does he have because he will take time to understand or adapt to your organization’s environment whereas, existing employees will not have to face such difficulty.
- Mitigation of uncertainty and risk: Lack of effective succession planning will lead to uncertainty and risk as there is a chance of losing future opportunities and risks of vacant seats for an uncertain period which can lead to a great mess in an organization.
Hence, these are the objectives and the importance of having succession planning in the organization. Not having succession planning in the organization may make the employees dishearten and may not satisfy the need for self-actualization which may result in the increase of the attrition rate in an organization.
Therefore, to mitigate the risk and be in competition it is important to practice the successive planning in an organization. Moreover, this should be implemented by every organization whether operating at a large, medium, or small scale.
Apart from this, there are various tools or tests built up for this to conduct the same such as Personality tools, behavioral and Cognitive assessment, Technical assessment, 360-degree feedback, etc. These tests can be conducted or chosen as per requirement or need.
Some service providers provide you with these professional services and even provide you with the facility of the customization. Lastly, it can be said that it’s necessary to be future proof and to boost up the use of succession planning in an organization.
