Many organizations are confronted with the imminent retirement of many key personnel and leaders. In addition, there are fewer people to fill many high level or strategic positions. As a result of these two statistically significant trends, succession planning has become a higher priority if not a strategic imperative for many organizations.
Succession planning is a proactive activity focused on developing a pool of talent with the skills, attributes, and experiences that are required to fill specific, and often, senior positions within the organization. To accomplish this, organizations must undertake a comprehensive assessment and planning process to identify and forecast the leadership needs of the future.
Success Criteria
There are several key success factors for a succession planning initiative. These include:
- Having visible support from the CEO and top management
- Identifying the leadership skills and competencies required by the organization to succeed
- The ability to find future leaders and motivate them
- Ensuring succession planning is aligned with and supports the corporate culture
- Include employee input
Performance Evaluations
The succession planning process includes identifying and preparing appropriate employees through mentoring, training, and job rotation to replace key senior personnel. As a result, 360 degree feedback and employee evaluations are among the key methods for supporting a succession planning process because these tools are essential to identifying future leaders and managing top talent. Timely, efficient performance evaluations are crucial because top performers and self-motivated achievers - the future leaders - will quickly grow frustrated and become disenfranchised if there are no perceived differences between their performance and that of mediocre performers.
Automating the Process
Web-based systems can automate every aspect of the employee evaluation and appraisal process within an organization including getting the right documents to right people at the right time. Effective web-based systems can be up and running in a matter of weeks and acclimatize to an organization quickly with a simple, intuitive user interface. Desirable characteristics of a web-based system also include the ability to support:
- Various types of employee evaluations - focal, anniversary, interim, and probationary
- Multiple appraisal and evaluation processes at the same time
- Complex scoring and weighting
Halogen Software offers several options for implementing a comprehensive talent management system that complements or supports a succession planning process. For more information, just contact us.
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