According to a study by LinkedIn¹https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-shocking-succession-planning-statistics-harsh-how-elliott-powell/, only 35% of organizations have a formalized succession planning process for critical roles. More than 74% of leaders report they are unprepared and lack the training for the challenges they face in their roles. And according to Telaxes²https://talexes.com/blog/workforce-development/2017-succession-planning-statistics, 94% of companies that did have a succession plan said that it positively impacts their employees’ engagement levels. It is clear that succession planning is critical to the long-term success of your organization!

If your company doesn’t have a succession plan in place yet, I went ahead and created a process map of how to develop an internal pool of top talent ready to step into new roles. A few keys to note:

1. Each year, all roles should be analyzed for how critical existing roles are to the organization and the levels of potential urgency and impact of a vacancy in those roles. This way, losing a lynchpin in upper management or positions with little overlap in skill sets and high dependencies will not turn into a crisis with a rush to hire new staff or put existing staff through trial by fire, as those roles should be the highest priority to go through the following process.
2. Succession planning does not just require nurturing potential successors with knowledge of tasks and skills, it also includes developing their competencies. Competencies are behaviors and attitudes that are critical to the success of certain roles, particularly those in leadership and upper management.
3. Thanks to the availability of one-click screen recording tools like Loom, training on tasks can be fast-tracked by simply having employees hit the record button while completing a key task. This means that training can be conducted without meetings, hand-holding, or working around schedules (particularly important when fully remote teams rely on asynchronous communication!)– instead, next-in-line personnel can pick up those tasks after watching a 2-5 minute video clip on 1.2x speed!

Check out the process map below, and feel free to email me with any questions at joyce.akiko@gmail.com!