Succession Planning - When and How to Start?

I am thankful and privilege to be invited as the guest speaker this morning for the 2nd general assembly of Bulacan Cooperative leaders consisting of 24 Bulacan Cooperatives (with 4 districts) plus a Bulacan-based federation.  It's always a learning experience and I really find it satisfying when I get to help them by sharing my understanding and skills gained in human resource management.

This morning, the topic was on "succession planning as key to effective leadership transition".  Since majority of the participants are cooperative managers and board members, I felt their strong concern on the continuity of their cooperatives, and they are eager to understand how they should identify their successors as I saw them jot down notes on their papers. 

Here are some questions I received during the discussion include the following (with corresponding answers):

Question 1:  We are relatively a small cooperative (about 20+ employees).  Is it still okay to assign the employees to different functions so as to test where they are really fitted?

Answer 1:  While you are small, it is understandable that your staff would do multi-tasking.  The processes are still uncomplicated specially if you still have limited offerings to your members.  Also, the number of transactions per day may not be too bulky so it would still be easy for your staff to be on the job training as they do their new functions.  Also, relatively small organizations usually have staff with the same level of expertise or staffs are selected based on relatively same qualifications or criteria.  Discrepancies or gaps on skills are not that far.  Thus, it would still be okay to do this strategy to find the right fit for your employees.  The start-up staff or your current staff will then have the opportunities to fully understand the operations, and they can become managers when time comes for the cooperative to expand.  But in the process, just be sure that you still maintain some control procedures in the functions that they handle.  Processes should be documented through manuals and policies should be reviewed and in-place as ready references as the coops grow.

Question 2:  At this point, when we get back to our coops, can we start with the succession planning?

Answer 2: Yes, but place the initial steps in place.  As we have discussed earlier, the board and the management (CEO/GM), with the assistance of the HR, are accountable in the implementation of the succession program.  The owners of this are the board members and the managers.  HR provides the nitty-gritty or implementation of the succession planning activities.  To start with, what you can do is review and updates your organizational structure.  Identify the key positions and review the job descriptions and qualifications (competencies, soft skills and other criteria) for these key positions.  Then look into the profile of your existing employees.  In their current position, see if the employees have gaps then prepare a training plan that would improve their competencies and be at par with your requirements.  Interview or ask your employees what their career direction within the cooperative.  Check for future personal plans of employees that are outside the cooperative.  This way, you can determine whom you should invest much on employees’ development. 

There are other questions raised during the question and answer portion or after the presentation.  However, I noticed that some cooperatives still lacks in the profiling of their employees.  I suggest that those who doesn't have a software or soft copy of employees data, they should start preparing it using the excel format.  Per excel sheet can be represented by an employee.  Using the records or 201 file, they can immediately extract information.  Then this data should regularly be updated.  What should be its content?  The following are some data you can include in that excel format:

1.  Name of Employee

2.  Date Hired

3.  Department

4.  Entry Position

5.  Current Position

6.  Entry Salary

7.  Current Salary

8.  Age

9.  Gender

10.  Civil Status

11.  No. of Children (if any)

12.  SSS No./TIN No./PhilHealth No.

13.  Contact Number

14.  Address

15.  Educational Attainment

16.  Trainings Attended

17.  Skills and Competencies

18.  Desired position

19.  Certifications

20.  Performance Appraisal

You can add up other data, but from the above information analyze and identify the skill gap between the current post and the qualification/criteria for the occupied post.  Also, identify the gap between the desired career path/position then develop a program that would address that gap.

A lot of this should be in place like the organizational structure, job descriptions, performance measures and key result areas but as for now, I highly recommend for your HR to do the 1st few steps mentioned above. 

I hope this blog was able to help and share our learning for today, August 19, 2014. 

To God be the Glory!

Succession Planning as Key to Effective Leadership Transition

I was invited to provide a talk on Succession Planning and prior to writing this blog, I made some researches to expound on what I would share to the attendees of my upcoming talk.  Here are some of the key points that I would like to share...

 

1.  Succession Planning as key to sustainability of the Activities done to attain organization's direction.  

Succession planning actually is providing a plan or map should in case a leadership post becomes vacated.  The organization's leaders provide the direction and goals; they lead the members of the organization on aligning their activities to the attainment of the organizational goal.  They also are the implementer of projects for improvements and initiates changes for the organizational growth. 

If an organization suddenly loses a leadership post without clearly defining the process of how to replace him/her, the organization will experience disruption in their regular operations.  If the post is highly essential to the organization's productivity, losing the employee occupying it may result to unrest or sudden stoppage.  These stoppage impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization in service to their clients.  A long time built credibility may be tarnished as a result of lacking in plan for leadership replacement.  Thus, it is really essential that a written plan or process should be integrated in the policies or process manuals of the organization.  This would provide the organization some semblance on how to handle emergency loss of leaders or if there's time, efficiency in the transition or transfer of leadership responsibilities and authorities.

 

2.  Succession Plan entails that an effective culture is considered in the identification of successors. 

Succession plans are not the same with all types of organization.  Different organizations have different culture and goals.  The leaders determine the values and culture of the organization.  If a leader is pro-learning, you will see projects and programs geared towards the development of the employees.  However, if the leader is cost-conscious, expect that budgets are bigger for operational requirements and usually training costs are cut-down to minimize expenses.  A leader who believes that to get the cream of the crop employees would approve a higher-rate entry salary, but for leaders who see that entry should be at the minimum would likely get employees whose experiences is lesser or competencies are still to be improved.

In preparing a succession plan, consider the competencies for the leadership post, as well as the soft-skills required for that post.  Grooming future leaders will take longer compared to finding the requirements from possible candidates.  The best thing to do is lay down first the benchmarks and criteria for the identified leadership post then profile existing employees, specifically those who are in the supervisory posts or officer posts.

 

3.  Succession Planning involves cost and is risk taking.

If succession plan involves grooming, then the organization would have to invest on the training and development of identified successors.  However, there is no complete assurance that the identified successors would really stay for good.  Early investment on supervisors and officers is risky but something that we have to take.  People's priorities change as time goes by.  If the organization is not able to keep the interest of that successor or if the organization was not able to address the need of the employees, tendencies are you would lose that employee or successor.  Training bonds are not enough to keep them.  The best approach that HR can think of is creating a program that would allow the employees see their future in the organization, such as career path planning.  This does not give 100% guarantee.  Remember, people are changing individuals and their needs & interests vary over time.

For now, these are three (3) things that I can share with my readers.  If you have any comments or insights, please feel free to share.  Have a great day ahead.