What are the importance and benefits of succession planning?

Succession planning is an important element of Talent management planning.

What is succession planning?

Succession planning is a type of planning where organizations identify internal employees as potential candidates for filling future vacancies that may arise within the organization and start training them well ahead of time to perform those roles.

Why is succession planning important?

Every organization will have some form of job vacancy arising in future due to attrition or people retiring from their jobs.  However, it is important for organizations to continue to function smoothly irrespective of losing such key employees performing key roles. When organizations have a succession plan, it makes it easier for them to handle any unforeseen attrition and prevents the organization from being greatly impacted by such attrition.

Many organizations perform this type of talent management planning for senior management positions so that losing a key leader would not disable the organizations’ regular functions. However, succession planning would be more effective if it is performed at all levels in the organization instead of focusing only on the top management.

Benefits:

The benefits of succession planning are numerous:

  • It serves as contingency planning and keeps the organization well prepared for any sudden attrition that may happen and reduces the impact of losing key employees to a great extent
  • By insisting on succession planning, managers get to identify various skill-sets among the team members and their strengths come to light
  • Also, employees who are identified as successors based on the skill-sets they possess can be groomed well to handle the relevant positions, and any skill-set that is lacking in the employee can be developed by providing appropriate training and opportunities
  • Employees get to have a well-defined road map of their career and it serves as a motivation factor for them to perform even better
  • Employees who get to understand that their organization has future plans for them, will tend to stay with the organization for longer time
  • Internal employees already have a good understanding of the organization and its goals. Thus, it saves a considerable amount of time and cost for the organization in hiring and inducting new candidates for these positions
  • Overall, it creates a very positive atmosphere within the organization and leaves employees feeling extremely satisfied in terms of career progress and highly motivated.

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