Succession planning helps an organization prepare for potential changes to the organizational structure, whether its due to promotions, retirement, turnover or other occurrences. Planning helps the organization determine knowledge skills and abilities (KSAs), existing gaps, and forecasting. The Great Resignation has proven that identifying, preparing and developing talent internally is essential to be competitive in retaining top talent.
Identifying the essential KSAs is part of creating a succession plan for each critical role within the organization. Ideally, this information would be found in the job description. Realistically, however, if the position description has not been updated in recent years, it likely needs to be reassessed.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how and where work is done in many companies and needs to be considered in succession planning. For example, knowing how to set up, use and maintain technology may not have been a vital competency for managers before the pandemic. This, however, may now be essential for managers in organizations that have shifted from in-person work to completely virtual due to the pandemic.
The second part of succession planning is assessing the gap. That is, using the succession plan to identify current employees’ skills gaps and needs. Planning and preparing future leaders within the organization is important to retaining talent. Retaining talent, on the other hand, is important because employees can easily transition into newly opened roles in the organization. One feeds the other, right? Demonstrating the commitment to provide leadership training, invest in employees and create promotion opportunities is important to retaining talent in a period where there are so many available job opportunities. Assess existing employees’ KSAs and determine the competencies to be included in their leadership training plan. Involve leadership in mapping the competencies, assessing employees, and developing and deploying leadership training.
Next, forecast potential changes to the organization’s leadership roles. Identify potential retirements, promotions, and exits. Involving human resources (HR) to determine the historical data for turnover for critical positions will assist in succession planning and leadership development training. Critical roles that must be filled quickly have KSAs that must be included in leadership training. This also creates the opportunity to involve leaders in coaching and mentoring as part of the succession and training plans.
The information within the succession plan provides the foundation for developing a leadership training program that makes an impact. Using the plan and involving critical roles within the organization will contribute to creating a leadership academy aligned with the organization’s goals while also retaining top talent.
Register for the June Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) to hear Kristin Davis’ session, “Developing a Leadership Training Academy.”
