Management Succession Planning and why is it most important for career management

Management succession planning is the planning for the availability of competent workforce pool who can replace valuable management staffs if there is need of manpower in the company. Before companies only looked for new employees’ right before on left. This caused uncertainty that the vacant place would be filled with equally qualified person. In the current market competition, loosing valuable employees can bring problems for the company. So the company plans before hand and prepares competent manpower for potential loss of valid employees. “In an overall definition, succession planning is a vital structure that takes into account the organization’s resources for the maintenance and development of high potential employees. (Mehrabani & Mohamad, 2011)”

Companies undergo a vigorous analysis and talent audit of the current employee in their organization on their talent, skills, leadership roles etc can ascertain if they could be good leaders or mangers in the future. Based on this analysis the selected employees are groomed over years. Company resources are spent on them for trainings and small decision making roles are hand down to them. Over the years they are groomed to become the next managerial workforce for the company. (Armstrong, 2012) founded the following: Management succession planning is the process of assessing and auditing the talent in the organization in order to answer three fundamental questions:

1. First, are there enough potential successors available – a supply of people coming through who can take key roles in the longer term?

2. Second, are they good enough?

3. Third, do they have the right skills and competencies for the future?
   Young candidates chosen for the grooming will have the opportunity to get their career developed by the company. This would be a golden opportunity for any talented and hardworking candidates. Both the company and the candidate can get high benefit by working together.

References
Armstrong, M. (2012). Management Succession planning. In M. Armstrong, ARMSTRON’S HANDBOOK OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES (12 ed., p. 261). London: Kogan Page.

Mehrabani, S. E., & Mohamad, N. A. (2011). Identifying the Important Factors Influencing the Implementation of Succession Planning. 2011 International Conference on Information and Finance , IPEDR vol.21 (2011). Singapore, Singapore: IACSIT Press. Retrieved from JURN: pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6584/fc03...

Succession planning is used by the leaders and HR managers to identify the strategy to replace key roles within the organization in case if the person holding a key position leaves the job, retires or dies (Armstrong, 2014). The process of succession planning includes of identifying the employees with the potential to be promoted to a senior position. The planning also involves how the organization communicate about the role change and how it plans to train and develop potential candidates. If a company doesn’t have a backup plan of replacement with the use of succession plan, the organization may have to leave one of the most critical role vacant for a long period of time than they’ll like to. This may cause the organization losing their direction and being unable to meet different business objectives, keeping the entire organization at a huge risk (Tolstoy, 1986).

HR Managers work closely with the organization’s board of directors to make a succession plan. This form of plan benefits the organization greatly as it provides the organizational leaders with a clear process to go through when one of the crucial role of in the organization becomes vacant. This helps in minimizing the risk of key roles being vacant for long period (Systems, 2011). Also, as the plan helps identify such candidate who has already been groomed to do the job, it removes the need for a new hiring to learn the organization process and job demand which often takes several months and more of a person’s time which could slow down hampering business direction and goals. This helps find the right replacement who is trained for the position in case of need in a very short period of time making sure that the company doesn’t slow down even during these time.

The succession plan also helps the existing employees of the organization as it provides them with an opportunity to be promoted to a senior level from within the organization if they have the right set of skills required. This provides the employees to become future leaders if the employees can take the opportunity for professional development and if the company promotes senior leaders from within.

Senior staff members of any organization hold a very key position that would be critical to an organization’s operations. In any case, if the senior staff leaves, the skills they had goes with them as well, which can make it difficult to replace them quickly with people who are equally qualified. This is where succession planning comes in place to ease the overall transaction process and by making sure that the organization has a replacement in hand by promoting someone from within who is trained and groomed for similar situation.

References

Armstrong, L. A. (2014). A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 13th Edition. Kogan Page Limited.

Systems, S. (2011). 5 Tips to Effective Succession Planning. SSRN Electronic Journal .

Tolstoy, L. (1986). Succession planning. Planning Review , 14 (3), 47-47.

Management succession planning is the process of identifying and developing new leaders when the old ones resign, leave, retire, are fired or die. It is a process by which individuals are scanned to pass on the leadership role within a company. The process ensures that business continues to operate efficiently without the presence of the people who were holding key positions in the organization. It ensures coaching and development of prospective successors or people within an organization or from outside to take up the key positions through an organized process of assessment and training (The Economic Times, n.d.). It is related with identifying the different capabilities required for different management positions and matches them with the readiness of current managers to fill them. It is used to address the inevitable changes by identifying and training high potential employees for managerial roles (Robert Half, n.d.). It is a critical but often overlooked process.

Career management is the combination of structured planning and the active management choice of one’s personal career. It is cautious planning of one’s activities and the jobs one undertakes in the course of life for better fulfillment, growth and financial stability. The onus of career management is more on the individual self than the employer. It is individual’s own responsibility to ensure personal development in terms of skills, competencies and attitudes. It is the process through which employees became aware about their own interests, values, strengths and weaknesses, obtain information about job opportunities within the organization, identify career goals and establish action plans to achieve them (Armstrong, 2014).

Succession planning is an important part of career management. In career management, people look for opportunities to develop themselves and succession planning provides them the opportunity to some extent. The importance of succession planning in terms of career management can be outlined in following points:

• Identification of future leaders: Succession planning identifies the current skills of the employees along with the additional skills they need to develop to move to the higher level. By providing the opportunity to develop new skills, succession planning helps in career management.

• Beyond Training: It helps in the career management of the employees by providing training and assistance required to promote them to the higher level managerial posts.

• Competency Gaps: Succession planning assists in identifying the gap between what the potential successor knows and what he needs to know to take up higher role with higher responsibilities. Increased competency supported by succession planning is also an integral part of career management.

• At the Board Level: For the employees with being in the board as a career goal, succession planning provides this opportunity by identifying vacancies, considering internal talent that can fulfil the vacancy and providing coaching to make them fit for the position.

References
Armstrong, M. (2014). Armstrong’s Handbook on Human Resource Management Practice.

Robert Half . (n.d.). Retrieved from roberthalf.com/blog/management-tip...

The Economic Times . (n.d.). Retrieved from economictimes.indiatimes.com/defin...