Succession planning a critical process for staff development and retention
Retaining top flight staff requires for clear career development and succession plans be in place
Every organization needs to have a succession planning process. The HBR stated that C-Level succession process is broken. This has resulted in poor performance followed by higher turnover and corporate instability. In addition, organizations need to be thinking broader than just C-Level succession – they need to dig deeper into the organization when thinking “succession.” As labor shortages increase, succession planning and leadership development require strategic initiatives requiring rigorous consideration.
Best Practices for Succession Planning
Have clear career paths defined for everyone
A job family classification system is one that defines how individuals can grow in to higher level positions over time by providing benchmarks and milestones that need to be achieved as they advance over time. This in time, impacts the responsibilities and compensation that is paid in a fair and objective manner.
Promote Proactive Steps To Be Taken by All
Every manager and key employee should have a replacement in mind. A succession planning process should be created and reviewed regularly. If the plan is not viewed positively and does not support employee retention then it needs to be re-worked.
Use existing human resource evaluation and compensation systems and metrics
Existing systems drive performance of the enterprise's staff use them as metrics in the succession planning process. If the right individuals are not moved into these key positions then your performance evaluation systems are not working. The people who should be promoted and are not not will see that and leave creating a problem for your enterprise in the future.
Use the same succession planning process across the entire organization
If the same succession plan is in place across the entire enterprise, then cross group movement will be encouraged and people will not feel they are locked in because some is not leaving the enterprise.
Review the succession plan with employees during the annual performance process
When the annual performance review process takes place, have the incumbent involved with the identification of their potential replacements. This would include having a training and experience plan in place
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Historic IT Job Market Size
Data complied by Janco Associates with data as of October 2024
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