Internal Mobility and Succession Planning

This edition of the Career Corner Mobility Newsletter focuses on the tenth and final element of my internal mobility model, Succession Planning. If you missed my issue earlier this year on 2024 Trends in Internal Mobility, read it here.

What is Succession Planning and Why Does It Matter?

In this blog from Gloat , the author answers the burning question, what can leaders do now to set up their organization for success?? The answer is to start prioritizing succession planning now to turn succession planning into your competitive advantage.

Succession planning is the process of identifying the key positions within your organization and developing action plans to ensure your business will continue to have the talent needed to fill those roles. It’s not about pre-selection, but instead preparation.

If you want to future-proof your workforce and ensure talent continuity, this is a critical process. Otherwise, there's a risk that leaders won't have employees with the skills needed to support their organization in the future.

There are many business benefits of succession planning including:

• Reduced organizational risk – succession planning gives organizations an opportunity to prepare for change so they can respond quickly to minimize risk.
• Cut hiring costs – succession planning enables businesses to grow best-fit candidates from within the organization, minimizing external hiring fees and longer timelines.
• Boost employee engagement and morale – with succession planning, you can show your employees that that they have potential to grow within the business to achieve their fullest potential.
• Increase DEIB efforts – new AI strategies for succession planning promote diversity, equity, and inclusion by matching best-fit candidates to democratize access to opportunity.

Succession planning starts by bringing your organization together to create a shared vision for your future. This requires cross-functional collaboration and input from stakeholders who are supporting every function of the business.

The Complete Succession Planning Guide for HR Professionals

This Quantum Workplace article expands on some of the topics covered in the Gloat blog and includes a Complete Succession Planning Guide for HR professionals.

The State of Internal Mobility, Succession and Career Development 2022-23

According to this HR.com article:

Internal mobility, career development, and succession management are essential to both employee and organizational goals. Each of these issues, while separate, strongly influences the others. When done well, they can have tremendous benefits such as improved employee retention, increased engagement, and the ability to bridge skills gaps. However, when even one of the elements is not done well, it can lead to major organizational challenges.

HR.com features their research findings from a study of these three critical processes, the barriers to their success, and what organizations can do to address the challenges.?

Here are their key findings (percentage is agree and strongly agree):

• 62% report their organization has effective internal mobility processes.
• 48% say their organization has effective succession plans.
• 62% report their organization has effective processes for career development.

These are the three biggest challenges respondents faced on internal mobility:

1. Managers who do not encourage movement (31%)
2. Employees are not provided with dedicated development time (28%)
3. Lack of positions to move employees into (27%)

Research findings also identified what internal mobility leaders do differently. First, they are three times more likely to incentivize managers for advancing employee careers. They are also three times more likely to have processes for employees to communicate their hidden talent.

The majority of respondents (31%) said they have a formal succession management program with a slightly lower percentage (39%) having a mix of formal and informal programs. You can check out their full report by clicking on the link to the article and scrolling down to access the report and infographic.

Ditch the List: Rethinking Our Succession Planning Approach

In this HR blog from Spotify, the author acknowledges that creating a typical list of potential successors has the best of intentions.? There are many challenges to this approach.? For example, is the list really referred to when a business-critical position comes open?? In organizations where change is a constant, how likely is it that the critical role will change before is opens?? Realistically, the succession planning journey requires many stars to align to the list.

Why Modern Succession Planning Needs a Skills-Based Approach

This article from HR Executive focuses on a skills-based approach to succession planning.? Right now, almost every organization wants to become skills based as they realize the value that skills visibility brings.?

Historically only some roles in the C-suite are worthy of the succession planning effort. It has rarely been used enterprise wide.? According to Deloitte’s years-long research study, they found that the gap between reality and intent is caused by the failure to address the impact of human behavior on the process.? The American Psychological Association explains that “Human skills are based in behavior.”

Given this, skills visibility is key to building a successful succession-planning strategy.? This means leveraging skills and reevaluating them to inform and update talent pools and pipelines.? Here are five ways to do this:

1. Rebuild rather than revisit – consider how the organization’s current state will inform its future state.
2. Set a why – start by designing a strategy that connects a specific need to a measurable result.
3. Promote skills visibility – by understanding what exists, it’s possible to envision where to go and how to bridge skill gaps.
4. Connect efforts – be sure to keep the employee experience top of mind throughout the process.
5. Stay agile – lean on technology to support changes as goals and circumstances continue to evolve.

Transform How You Think About Succession Planning with a Skills-focused Approach

From this Eightfold blog:

According to Eightfold AI’s recent report, 70 percent of surveyed employees ranked promotion opportunities as a top priority. While 67 percent of HR leaders rated their internal mobility as highly effective, the findings showed it’s likely to be very selective.

Some customers are realizing the benefit of expanding succession planning strategically for employees across the organization.? Dicks’ Sporting Goods is a good example of experimenting with succession planning.? Brad Cohen, Senior HRIS Analyst at Dick’s Sporting Goods said they were able to use AI-driven insights and competency assessments to help inform our succession plans and recommend potential candidates they had not been thinking about. Using a skills-based approach, they were able to consider additional profiles and increase pipeline diversity.

Eightfold identified how organizations are meeting strategic business goals faster when they effectively identify leadership potential:

• Make succession planning a business initiative.
• Consider a broader pool of talent.
• Identify potential leaders for all critical roles.
• Use data to explore role-based and scenario-based planning.
• New tools mean a new approach to succession planning.

Can Succession Planning Safeguard Your Organization Against the Skills & Talent Shortage?

In this Fuel50 article, the author highlights how the ongoing talent shortage has caused many organizations to shift their focus from external hires to internal candidates to maximize talent pools and fill vacant roles.

Succession planning plays an important part in this shift by optimizing and encouraging internal mobility across an organization. It’s a more strategic approach to building talent pipelines to help prepare and develop employees for future roles within the business.

According to research from ManpowerGroup, it’s expected that by 2030, the global talent shortage will reach more than 85 million people. ?Given the anticipated worsening of the tight labor market, why search for new talent when you already have skilled employees to fill critical roles with less expense and transition time?

Succession Planning: Maintaining Talent Continuity

This PeopleScout APAC insights article focuses on leveraging succession planning to retain institutional knowledge. ?According to research by Panopto , 42% of the skills and expertise required to perform in a position will only be known by the person currently occupying it.? While some of the institutional knowledge is translated into processes and policies, most of it resides with individual employees.

With succession planning, you can ensure that knowledge sharing can occur concurrently between an employee and their potential successor, giving the successor the unique opportunity to gain useful skills and knowledge without a long, on-the-job learning curve.

When identifying positions to include in your succession plan, consider:

• Positions central to strategic goals or that provide a competitive advantage.
• Positions specific to your organization or industry.
• Positions of influence and leadership.
• Jobs with long learning curves, training requirements, specialized licenses and certifications.
• Positions that require institutional knowledge and experience.

After critical positions have been identified, the next step is to identify employees who can potentially fit into critical roles when opportunities arise.? Assess successor candidates based upon their knowledge, skills, and abilities.? KSA’s are the core competencies used when assessing talent.? A KSA profile of each candidate should be developed to determine if their attributes align well with a specific role.

Your succession planning teams can start building KSA profiles by asking these questions:

1. Where does the organization see the role evolving in the next three to five years?
2. What unique or specialized competencies are needed to succeed in the role?
3. What qualities should the new successor possess to thrive in the role and meet the organization’s objectives.

A success does not need to be someone who will think, talk, and react in the same as the incumbent, you just need to be confident that the candidate can step up to the plate when called.

Training and development for potential successor candidates should include both real-life scenarios and classroom-style training. Below are a few common exercises to help ease the candidates into their future roles:

• Stretch Assignments: Ensure employees complete a set of tasks or assignments that stretch their limits. Examples include leading a special project, being assigned to a challenging task, or chairing a committee.
• Job Rotations: Enable successor candidates to rotate and assume different roles to obtain new experiences and learn more about the operations and processes of your organization.
• Mentoring and Coaching: Create or leverage existing corporate mentorship programs and pair successor candidates with senior employees to provide candidates with ongoing guidance, deeper insights, and career support.

Clear and concise communication with successor candidates is key.? Research by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance company found that 25% of employees in line for a key role did not know they had been chosen. Be sure to inform each employee that you have identified as a potential successor, especially for leadership roles. Otherwise, these employees might think they have no real future in your organization and might make plans elsewhere.

Summary

This Insperity blog on internal mobility sums it up.? By putting in place effective succession planning and the right development opportunities, your employees will understand their potential and be more empowered to shine.

Meanwhile, you’ll have understudies on standby – because let’s face it, succession planning isn’t just for top roles. You need potential successors at the ready for every critical role in your company.

What is your one key takeaway from this newsletter edition? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.