Succession planning is a company-wide plan to pass down leadership roles from one person to another employee or group of workers. Succession planning guarantees an uninterrupted and seamless operation in the firms even after important persons leave for a new chance, retire, or pass away.
It may also bring about a liquidity event, thus making it possible for rising employees to own the already moving concern. However, a survey conducted by SHRM showed that over 21% of companies do not have proper succession plans.
This hampers their productivity and growth. This is all the more important since a survey conducted by the Institute of Corporate Productivity showed that companies with a formal succession plan had 67% more scope for identifying future leaders.
What Is the Need for A Succession Plan?
Succession planning is one of the good ways for companies to ensure full readiness in promoting and advancing all employees irrespective of their ranks; managing or executive. Proper planning keeps employees motivated and engaged with the company, leading to long-term benefits, as a study conducted by SHRM shows. Now, you must be thinking about how succession planning can help a company do better.
There are various advantages for both employees and employers to have a well-structured succession plan. So, here are some of the benefits:
- Employees are aware that there is a possibility for promotion and perhaps ownership as well, this can hence result in increased autonomy and greater job contentment.
- For employees’ career development, it reinforces the knowledge that there is a plan for future opportunities; if they are aware of such plans, they will take training seriously.
- This allows good monitoring of employees’ values that management uses to fill relevant positions internally as they become available.
- Company values and vision can be more appropriately shared by employees and leadership.
- There’s a need for a new breed of leaders when there is a demassification of individuals out of jobs into retirement.
Apart from these benefits, a survey conducted by Panopto shows that over 60% of employees are often uninformed about their work. This leads to less productivity and more frustration. This is where succession planning tools help as they ensure clarity among all.
How Do Succession Planning Tools Help?
Companies utilize succession planning as a means of facilitating the transition in leadership or ownership. It entails identifying people from within the firm who qualify for career progression and grooming them to occupy new positions in the company. Such plans can only be effective if firms are willing to do what it takes to ready themselves.
Many times, plans are long-term ones to ensure that we are ready even when the future is calling for certain changes. To manage any unforeseen alterations in policy, emergency plans must be put in place.
However, this kind of planning and grooming requires a lot of extra work. This is where such tools come in, that are designed to take the load off of you. Here’s how tools can help an organization to plan their succession well:
- Identifying Employees with High Potential:
Tools for succession planning can assist in forming as well as tracking the growth plans for prospective successors. These plans may comprise objective establishment, chances for learning, and coaching tasks.
- Providing Insights
The tools for planning can offer an understanding of the general condition of planning. Also, they assist in finding possible deficits and monitoring development.
- Developing Employees
A survey conducted by Quantum Workspace shows that people leave workspaces due to lack of development opportunities. Establishing and monitoring advancement plans for possible heirs can be done with the aid of planning tools. Such plans may comprise integrating objectives, providing educational chances, and assigning mentors.
- Streamlining this Process
The instruments for succession planning can facilitate and make the entire procedure of future planning more efficient.
Top Five Tools for Succession Planning
Several aspects should be taken into consideration before opting for any succession planning program. A few of those features comprise identification and evaluation of talents, performance management integration, development planning, competency tracking, and reporting as well as analytics.
As per a DDI report, companies with similar programs outperformed their peers by over 19%. Now let’s look at some of the most popular tools developed by some highly qualified websites working on the same:
- Success Circle:
StaffCircle’s Success Circle is probably a holistic succession planning platform that aims to recognize and develop employees with high potential within an organization. It may provide features such as talent assessment, skills gap analysis, and individually tailored development programs.
Potential perks of this tool are measuring efficiency, having coaching courses, and planning for profit. Additionally, Success Circle could offer evaluation and accounting possibilities so that HR experts and business leaders can utilize information when selecting employees for future positions. The term “circle” in its name implies a full 360-degree view of succession management which takes into consideration different sides of the employee’s career development.
- PlaygroundZero:
Succession Wizard’s PlaygroundZero is a user-friendly, wizard-based tool for simplifying the planning process. It could provide a step-by-step approach to use in identifying pivotal roles, assessing potential successors, and developing plans.
The proposition forwarded by its name, “Playground” implies that it has an opportunity to present a likely gamified or interactive interface meant to make succession planning more fascinating.
PlaygroundZero can have features such as role-playing scenarios, skills assessment tests, and dynamic org chart graphics. Most probably this tool targets companies searching for a simple or guided process of planning without deep HR knowledge.
- Cornerstone Galaxy:
Cornerstone Galaxy, which is a part of the Cornerstone OnDemand suite, is likely a cloud-based talent management system that has powerful succession planning features. In addition, it may provide many functionalities such as performance management, learning, and development, among others, as well as analytics.
The Galaxy branding symbolizes a collection of HR tools that have close interrelationships. Cornerstone OnDemand can provide advanced artificial intelligence-driven insights for identifying high-potential employees, predictive analytics for future talent needs, and integration with other HR systems, among other benefits. This may suit large companies looking for a complete, scalable solution to their succession planning demands.
- PlumThrive:
Plum’s PlumThrive tool might be targeting identifying and nurturing talent through data-driven methods such as psychometric assessments, AI algorithms, and behavioral science to provide objective insights into employees’ potential and their fit for different roles. Among its functionalities is talent matching which helps in aligning employees’ natural abilities with the most appropriate positions within the company.
The tool focuses on making adjustments and enhancing future capabilities rather than reviewing existing performance, thus preparing organizations to transform their needed skills. This could work well on companies aiming to erase prejudice from their succession planning procedures.
- Talent Pool Builder:
Talent Guard utilizes its Talent Pool Builder as a specialized tool for creating and managing talent pools within an organization. The tool may aim to identify high-potential employees who work in different departments and levels across the organization, thus facilitating their grouping into pools for targeted development.
This tool likely has functionalities for evaluating skills, mapping competencies, and visualizing career paths. Collaborative features could be part of Talent Guard, which allows managers and HR professionals to assess and develop talent working together. Aside from this, it may provide data about the state and diversity of talent pools that would help organizations make sure they always have a strong pool of future leaders.
Conclusion
Overall, succession planning identifies the crucial positions within a particular organization and develops proper plans that can be executed. This process helps in being prepared for a change not only within the company but also allows the individual to prepare themselves better. However, it can be difficult for an individual to conduct such a lengthy process thoroughly. This is where these apps come in with their specialized tools to help you work better.