Succession planning is the process of identifying, recruiting, and training the best successor or talent to assume the roles of current leaders within the organization in the near future. Besides paving the way for future leaders, succession planning is also vital to ensuring long-term stability as well as business continuity.
So, if succession planning is such an important business process, why isn’t it taken more seriously? Studies have shown that many businesses particularly those owned by families often lack any form of succession planning in identifying the best successor. By failing to do so, these businesses face the risk of becoming irrelevant and therefore non-competitive.
In many organizations, succession plans were typically drawn up by members of the senior management who would appoint a protege or best successor. However, this approach is no longer applicable in today’s modern world and businesses need to adopt a more tactical approach towards succession planning. This can be done in a variety of ways, join us as we take a look at the role HR management plays in succession planning.
Automate more traditional HR roles
HR professionals have unfortunately long been relegated to back-office functions such as filing and payroll management. This is a wasteful use of their time and instead, organizations should look at automating more laborious HR processes.
By freeing up HR professionals from more traditional, administrative roles, they are able to focus on their core functions; which are the recruitment, identification, and training of talent within the organization.
Payroll management is a vital HR process that often requires extensive input from HR professionals. However, with IQ Dynamics this is not the case as we have designed our system to ease the flow of work while automating other more laborious processes.
For example, our employee self-service (ESS) portal allows employees to view and download their payslips without having to approach a member of the HR department. Our ESS portal allows employees to self-submit their e-IRAS forms which further frees up your HR department.
Leave management and employee attendance is other crucial HR function that can be automated by our system. In the past, employees were required to submit physical copies of their leave requests which not only had a tendency to get misplaced but also needed to be filed by HR professionals.
With our ESS portal, employees can submit their leave requests via mobile app or PC thus eliminating the need to submit a physical copy of their leave form. As all leave requests are recorded and updated in our HR software, members of the HR department will no longer be burdened by physical files.
As mentioned in our previous point, freeing up members of the HR department allows them to focus on strategic HR functions. Strategic HR management is defined as the connection that HR professionals have with the goals, strategies, and objectives of their organization.
Employee recruitment and selection is one such example of a strategic HR function. HR professionals should be regarded as the gatekeepers of an organization. During the recruitment process, HR professionals should be responsible for identifying if a candidate is a suitable match for the organization.
An employee who is a poor fit for the organization will naturally have a more difficult time fitting in. Down the line, this will naturally lead to conflict or result in said employee becoming toxic and disengaged. When developing a succession plan, a leadership candidate who demonstrates a lack of understanding of the company’s culture may be more troubled than he/she is worth.
Take the case of Bob Nardelli; the former CEO of Home Depot who was named one of “America’s worst CEOs of all time”. During the year 2000, Nardelli was hired as the CEO of Home Depot despite having zero retail experience. Throughout his tenure as CEO, Nardelli would alienate customers and employees with his blunt and antagonistic management style while angering shareholders with his large pay package.
At the end of it all, Home Depot’s stock would plummet in value and the company ended up losing significant amounts of its market share to rival company Lowe. Consequently, Nardelli was fired and paid a severance package of $210 million.
The above situation highlights the importance of robust recruitment and selection procedures in an organization’s succession planning. By requiring hiring managers to submit their manpower requisition requests to the HR department, our HR software encourages both stakeholders to keep open lines of communication between themselves. Along with this, hiring managers can review candidates prior to shortlisting them for specific roles and be on the lookout for the next best successor.
All of this provides HR professionals and hiring managers with the visibility they need to identify potential job candidates. This has the benefit of ensuring that only suitable candidates are taken on into the organization.
Employees should always be considered as an organization’s largest and most important investment. Skilled and talented employees make significant contributions to the organization’s goals which creates value for the business.
HR professionals must be able to identify potential leaders and capable specialists within the organization. However, most organizations tend to overlook the importance of employee development in succession planning. By investing in its employees, an organization will be able to secure a pipeline of talent for succession purposes.
Employee development involves upskilling employees and helping them sharpen their skills. With an HRM system from IQDynamics, HR professionals will be able to identify potential leaders within the organization earmark them for further training, and plan for the best successor.
This is done via a two-stage approach, with the first stage being performance appraisal. During this stage, IQ Dynamics’ HRM system provides HR professionals with a series of templates that enable them to accurately gauge the performance of said employee. These templates cover a series of criteria such as project appraisals and daily job functions which enables the HR professional to develop a complete picture of said employee’s performance.
Next, the learning and development module allows HR professionals to set benchmarks for each individual job within the organization. From here, a competency framework can be developed to identify areas of improvement for each employee. Also, managers are also given a degree of control over the learning and development process. This means that managers are able to nominate promising employees for certain learning courses to further develop them.
All of this contributes towards the organization developing a core of highly capable, knowledgeable individuals who can be groomed for leadership positions within the organization; a function which simplifies succession planning.
Succession planning is crucial for the long-term survival and growth of the organization.
If you are keen on looking for integrated HR software that assists you in automating laborious HR tasks and preparing for the best successor, contact us here!