Plan for Success - a Usecase for Succession Planning
INTRODUCTION
Succession planning is a strategic means of finding out who the next set of management/leaders/business heads will be as current employees move on to new prospects within or outside the firm. This process is key to ensuring the longevity and productivity of the business. Moreover, succession planning allows you to map out the future career paths of your employees and plan their learning and development around those roles.
THE CHALLENGE
Employees who want to explore new possibilities of growth scale up in their current organization or leave for new opportunities. Businesses need to plan for succession so that there is never a lapse in leadership or productivity. Even though succession planning is beneficial, many organizations do not have a set plan or process for it.
The following are a few of the problems businesses confront:
- Inadequate knowledge of skills and experience required for all positions in the company.
- A lot of time and resources are wasted trying to fill a position that’s only vacant because someone has already left. Being proactive and looking for suitable candidates BEFORE someone leaves their role will save you time in the long run.
- Due to the lack of organizational framework, they are unable to identify potential candidates within the network to fill the openings efficiently.
- Without well-defined career paths, employees tend to feel insignificant and look for opportunities outside of the company.
- Sometimes, people allow their decisions to be clouded by personal biases or past successes. However, new responsibilities may necessitate a different set of abilities, and the majority of HR professionals’ best efforts are usually unsuccessful.
THE SOLUTION
The answer is to use a well-planned succession planning technique. The most appealing aspect of tech team succession planning is that the talents are so tangible that it’s simple to anticipate who will be successful in their roles. There are generally two types of roles: leadership and non-leadership. Leadership/management roles such as Team Leads, Project Managers, and Architects have unique job descriptions. For example, a project manager may require broader experience in a variety of skills, but an architect requires more specialized knowledge in a specific area. Non-leadership roles are other positions inside the teams that a person’s natural inclination would be. These roles necessitate a variety of skills and profound expertise in most of them.
PLANNING FOR SUCCESSION
- Using technology, the organization should establish several assessments intended to identify the skills, expertise, and knowledge needed to fill the roles.
- The company may identify potential applicants by utilizing a variety of methods of evaluation, including past performance, potential, and formal assessments of abilities.
- Furthermore, to better identify and map out job paths for staff, an organization-wide skill matrix could be established.
- Assessments might be used with the appraisal process to accurately determine an employee’s development for each job change.
- Yaksha is an assessment platform that automatically generates reports and analyses to identify the skills, strengths, and development areas of candidates. This allows HR professionals to make better decisions about which potential candidates are best suited for various roles.
- Assessments could also assist learning and development professionals in hyper-customized training programs and journeys for optimum training outcomes.
Assessments in the Data to Decision era provide important insights into an organization’s skill matrix, outline current workers’ career paths, identify gaps and enable better hiring and L&D, as well as succession planning. Using a smart assessment platform like Yaksha could help you simplify your processes, ensure impartial and accurate judgments, and maintain business continuity in the VUCA environment.
