• Friday, March 29, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

Succession planning

Succession planning-2

I probably sound like a scratched record, but I am always happy to connect on a Friday because most people reading this column are more relaxed since it is a Friday. Even if you did not achieve all you planned to achieve this week, yesterday is gone, live in today and the next morning always brings hope.

Today we are going to be talking about a topic that only the very big organisations seem to think of. Succession planning. This is a process for identifying and developing new leaders who can replace old leaders when they leave, retire or die. This increases the availability of experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they become available. Without this kind of planning you can end up with inexperienced and not fit for purpose employees, (through no fault of their own) filling important and crucial roles.

Many people believe succession planning should only focus on key leaders in the organisation. This should change because there are many positions that are not considered leadership positions as such but are strategic and cannot be left vacant.

Although we like to say no one is indispensable, replacing a leader or contributor with highly specialised knowledge or competencies is costly and time-consuming. Succession planning mitigates the effects of a sudden or unanticipated vacancy in a principal position.

Every organisation experiences leadership change. Leaders may leave due to planned circumstances, such as retirement, or their departure could be sudden and surprising, due to an illness, family emergency, or even their death. Succession planning is not a ‘nice to have’ it is a “must have”.

This is a focused process for keeping talent in the pipeline, all the way to the top. It is generally a 12- to 36-month process of preparation not necessarily pre-selection even though this can be the case sometimes.

All organisations can benefit from the principles of identifying crucial job skills, knowledge, social relationships and organisational practices in order to pass them on to prepare the next generation of workers, thereby ensuring the seamless movement of talent within the organisation.

Many people both bosses and HR practitioners, believe that succession planning is a complex process and a practice restricted to the largest organisations with the most sophisticated organisational development departments. However, succession planning can be of great value to smaller organisations that have fewer resources available for knowledge management programs and the formal, structured development of employees.

Whether in a big organisation or in a small organisation, the employees have the same expectations. They are entitled to the same things and should not be denied these crucial things.

The coming together of the organisational needs and employee interests occurs in succession planning because of its wide scope and open process. There are many reasons for engaging in succession planning which include but are not limited to the following.

Adapting to demographic changes both in staff and customer base and talent scarcity. We say talent scarcity because many of those who would stay in organisations for any length of time are getting fewer and fewer. Many employees leave to set up their own businesses. They move organisations in search of greener pastures. This means they don’t acquire the core skills and requisite experience needed at the top and in strategic positions.

A large number of the people who stay, may not be the best of the crop. Demographic shifts create intense competition for talent—perhaps more rapidly or slowly than anticipated, but inevitably. These trends present opportunities for comprehensive succession planning to fill the upcoming shortages in talent.

Organisations need to help everybody be the best they can be. Harvesting critical organisational knowledge so it can be shared with subsequent generations of workers is therefore crucial.

Succession planning articulates necessary skill sets and competencies for key positions and this yields the added benefit of identifying skill gaps and training needs in the existing population. This process therefore involves an audit to find out the current skills, skills gaps and therefore the training needs to ensure that upcoming staff have the requisite knowledge required to fill the positions in view.

Interventions such as cognitive and behavioural training programs can be developed during the planning period and customized to the particular learning needs of the target group. however as said before if we can retain many of the same people through the ranks, less training programs will be utilised

Succession planning without over stressing the point, helps to retain the knowledge developed in the organisation. The keeping of this knowledge helps to make world class organisations. These days more employees are now hired and paid for their thinking rather than for their labour. This means that what we know is likely more important than what we do.

The entire concept of knowledge management focuses on identifying, harvesting, archiving and retrieving organisational knowledge. This is what keeps organisations in continuous improvement mode. If there is no planning when the employee leaves, all the knowledge leaves with them.

This is the reason why multinationals hire into management trainee positions and like to nurture their hires into the senior positions rather than hiring from outside into a senior position. Where succession planning has been successful you don’t have to start re-inventing and re-training people because they have been deliberately groomed from the beginning.

Imagine the reductions in learning curves for critical positions that could be achieved if much of the knowledge gained by experience, were passed from one generation of workers to another. With succession planning, this sharing can occur concurrently between the worker and the potential successor, giving the successor the unique opportunity to gain useful skills and knowledge without a long, on-the-job learning curve. In addition, succession planning substantially decreases the need for formal training programs and the resources they consume

Succession planning boosts morale and retention by investing in employees. Many people leave because they cannot see a future in their jobs as they have not been carried along as to the possible prospects for them in the organisation. Once they know the career- path, they understand the need to acquire competencies and up-grade even on their own.

When the organisation visibly investments in its employees, it is a tremendous boost to employee engagement and morale. According to Herzberg’s theory of motivation, meeting the personal growth, achievement and recognition needs of employees promotes motivation. I guess we have always said this in this column.

With proper design and consideration given to the group demographics, succession planning can be structured to deliver all three motivators. Regardless of its scope, any succession planning program is enhanced with the consideration of a number of factors.

We will continue next week to see how best to go about succession planning which is one of the bones in the spine of building an organisation that will last.

LAMIDE BALOGUN