Browse our jobs and apply for your next role.
The right candidate is just a few clicks away.
PageGroup changes lives for people through creating opportunity to reach potential.
If you have any questions, we’re here to help.
While there’s never a good time to lose a key leader in your organisation, succession planning can minimise the potential disruption and ensure essential business continuity.
Even the most well-oiled companies can quickly experience roadblocks and challenges when a key leader or manager moves on. Succession planning helps keep operations ticking over until critical vacancies are filled.
With that in mind, here’s how to create an effective successful plan for your business or team.
All businesses lose good people at one point or another – for a variety of personal or professional reasons. Succession planning is the process of preparing for that shift and period of change to ensure the business is well-placed to continue on with its goals and strategy regardless.
Filling critical vacancies can be expensive, time consuming and challenging, often leaving a significant resource gap that becomes delegated or lumped on to the current team, creating another set of challenges. Employers need to prepare for this by implementing a succession planning process that will allow them to minimise the impact of losing key leaders.
Succession planning typically includes:
While the succession management process differs from one organisation to another, there are certain characteristics of an effective program that are universal. Succession planning should be:
Here are four crucial tips for optimising the succession planning process:
To create a solid base for your succession plan, start by analysing corporate business plans to identify the positions and skills most critical for business growth. Then, establish the key competencies required to undertake these roles and the high potential employees that could step up and assume these positions.
Proactively identify and develop high potential employees so you have people with the right skills and experience to assume key leadership roles when they become available.
As an employer, this will enable you to respond to change more effectively and ensure leadership continuity. It’s also an effective process for recognising, developing and retaining proven or high potential leadership talent.
Determine the training, development or recruitment strategies required to fill skill gaps. If aiming to hire internally, this could include mentoring, coaching, job rotation, secondments, educational programs and formalised feedback processes.
Most importantly, succession planning needs to be an ongoing commitment. Managers in all parts of the organisation should be continually identifying gaps in talent and focusing on the development of high performers, while recognising when external recruitment may be the appropriate path to fill vacancies.
We recruit on behalf of the world's top companies. Fast-track your success with the right team. Explore how we can quickly match you with top talent.
Find your next hire
Discover your value with salary benchmarks across various industries.
We'll quickly match you with skilled and experienced candidates.
Discover the Expectation Gap between employees and employers, and learn how to bridge it effectively.
If you are an employer and would like to discuss your hiring needs, fill in the form below and we will call you back.
IMPORTANT: By submitting your email address and any other personal information to this website, you consent to such information being collected, held, used and disclosed in accordance with our PRIVACY POLICY and our website TERMS AND CONDITIONS.