Succession Planning for 2024- It's Not Just for Emergencies - It's a Leadership Development Strategy

00
days
00
hours
00
minutes
00
seconds
  • Webinar Duration60 Min
  • Webinar Date01 Jun. 2024
  • Webinar IdAT2912

Description

Fortune 500 companies and small family businesses alike share a business need - ensuring that they have the talent necessary to effectively lead their organizations in the future. One of the most significant contributions a leader can make is insuring his/her business’ continuity and sustainability - by having employees who are willing and capable of filling each key position with a plan for doing so when the need arises.

Succession Planning is a:

  • The deliberate, systematic process of anticipating the need for talent and ensuring that the necessary employee competencies and experience are available when needed in the future
  • A strategic approach for avoiding an undersupply of talent, enhancing the organization’s current talent pool, and meeting its future needs
  • Not having a Succession Plan can be costly and sometimes disastrous; it’s expensive to recruit, interview, select, onboard and train a new leader and significant opportunity costs are incurred when a key job is not being performed.
Area Covered In The Webinar

Succession Plan Defined

  • A deliberate, systematic process of anticipating the need for talent and ensuring that the necessary employee competencies and experience are available when needed
  • A strategic approach for avoiding an undersupply of talent, enhancing the organization’s current talent pool, and meeting the organization’s future needs

Objectives and  Benefits of Succession Planning

  • Sustain the business through a systematic effort to ensure leadership continuity in key positions
  • Attract, retain & develop high potentials [HiPos]
  • Encourage HiPos development by:
  • Identifying career paths
  • Conducting performance appraisals
  • Providing daily coaching
  • Creating Individualized Development Plans [IDPs]
  • Holding Talent Review meetings

Tools and Processes Commonly Utilized for Developing and Implementing 

  • Self-appraisals and career goals
  • Performance appraisals, 360 feedback, and ratings
  • Assessment instruments
  • GE grid
  • Individual development plans [IDPs]
  • HiPo talent development interventions
  • Talent review meetings 

What an Organization, its Leaders, and the Program Participants Need to Do To Achieve an Effective Plan 

What an organization needs to do:

  • Supply funding/budget
  • Establish a clear vision and guidance for the program
  • Develop a formal, written program
  • Announce the objectives of the program to all employees
  • Ensure that all leaders and managers support the program 

What the leaders need to do:

  • Have job descriptions developed for their teams
  • Conduct effective, formal performance appraisals
  • Identify employee developmental areas
  • share their knowledge and experience
  • Involve employees in more of the leader's responsibilities
  • Facilitate the completion of IDPs for all Hi Pos

What the program participants need to do:

  • Conduct self-appraisals
  • Identify their desired career paths
  • Learn as much as they can about potential future assignments
  • Perform to their capabilities
  • Complete their IDPs
  • Develop the employees reporting to them - so they have successors

Potential Measures of the Program’s Success

  • Whether there is, at least, one successor for each key position
  • Having developmental goals and IDPs established for each successor
  • Determining how much of their manager’s job the successors can perform
  • Determining whether successors can perform their manager’s jobs when they are unavailable and evaluating their performance during those times
Why should you attend?

The primary objectives for and deliverables of a Succession Planning program are to:

Sustain the business through a deliberate and systematic effort to anticipate and ensure leadership continuity in key positions

Retain and develop the organization's high potential [HiPos]

Encourage individual development by:

  • Identifying career paths 
  • Conducting formal performance appraisals
  • Providing daily coaching
  • Creating Individualized Development Plans [IDPs]

During Succession Planning Programs:

At the macro level the organization is proactively determining:

  • The talent needed in the future
  • The talent it has now
  • Where there are talent gaps
  • The initiatives necessary to close those gaps

At the micro level, the organization is addressing - for each of its key positions - questions such as:

  • What the organization would do if it had to fill the position tomorrow
  • Whether there is, at least, one successor who could immediately perform the duties of the position
  • If there is no successor ready now, what will need to be done to enable the best internal candidate to be ready, and when can he/she be ready
  • Can the organization afford to wait or would it be better to recruit a successor, etc

Experience has found the following two processes to be very effective in enabling organizations to have the talent they need when it’s needed:

#1 Performance Management and/or 360 Feedback Processes - through which the organization is able to:

  • Evaluate its employees’ current performance - based on documented, objective 
  • Performance and achievements 
  • Assess its employees’ advancement potential 
  • Determine its employees’ current readiness for advancement 
  • Obtain from its employees self-appraisals identifying their developmental needs and 
  • Preferred career plans
  • Meet its bench strength needs by initiating Individual Development Plans and 
  • Experiences - at least, for its A Players and/or High Potentials - such as: 
  • Special or stretch projects 
  • Assignments in other depts./job rotations
  • 'Try-out/popcorn stand' slots mentors
  • Formal training and development initiatives
  • Fast track programs with exposure to other functions
  • Intense coaching, etc.
  • Track their A Players’ and High Potentials’ performance and advancement potential against a Performance-Potential Grid

#2 Talent Review Meetings - during which the executive team in a disciplined fashion:

  • Asks each leader to report on the status of the Individual Development Plans for each of their A Players and High Potentials
  • Ensure that each A Player and High Potential is receiving regular coaching and is actively involved in opportunities that will help retain them while accelerating their development
  • Drives the organization past 'business as usual' by ensuring that its future needs for human capital are identified and will be satisfied when the time arrives - as it will

Succession Planning initiatives also increase the levels of engagement and performance of your A Players and High Potentials - the talent your organization will most need in the future.


Who Will Benefit?
  • HR Professionals New to the Field - seeking a comprehensive view of the subject with multiple application initiatives
  • Experienced HR Professionals - seeking a refresher
  • Leaders and Managers - interested in understanding how a Succession Plan benefits an organization

Credits

Course "Succession Planning for 2024- It's Not Just for Emergencies - It's a Leadership Development Strategy" has been pre-approved by HRCI as eligible for 1 credits towards a participant's recertification upon full completion.

*The use of this seal is not an endorsement by the HR Certification Institute of the quality of the program.

Speaker