Succession plans are necessary in every organization no matter how convincing the organization’s future appears. A succession plan enables a company plan for uncertainties such as disaster, illness or a vacancy as well as planning for leadership. It gives employees the opportunity to share their views and reinforce the relations existing within departments. Succession planning involves assessing and determining internal employees that are suitable to fill up each significant position within the organization and the decision to groom them for such interesting roles through developing their skills as well as abilities (Charan, Drotter, James, 2001). To come up with an effective succession planning, the organization’s objectives should be clearly outlined so as to align with the succession plan. This paper therefore, addresses the professional activities undertaken by the human resource department in my organization, succession planning process as well as recommendations for improving the succession planning process.
Human resource department of an organization is usually responsible for the establishment of succession plans. The department is normally involved in a number of professional activities that one must have an idea of before embarking on succession planning (Sofo, 1999). These professional activities include, first, recruitment of employees. As a means of developing the organizations workforce, organizations conduct both internal and external recruitments. Internal recruitments are meant to incorporate internal employees into the process and offer them a chance to apply for vacancies before external sources are contacted. These instils a sense of belonging as well as loyalty among employees and avoids hostility between internal and external employees. This process involves advertising vacancies internally and externally through media and internal memos to offer chances to all interested parties, screening of applicants, conducting of primary interviews to select qualified applicants and finally hiring potential applicants who fit the organizations requirements (Cole, 2000).
Secondly, human resource department ensures safety of employees at the workplace. This is done through employers ensuring that the employees are provided with a peaceful environment that allows them to conduct their work diligently. The human resource department supports workplace safety through offering training on safety issues to employees as well as complying with government requirements on employee safety.
Thirdly, it ensures employee relations at the workplace. This is done through ensuring that employees are represented in the labor unions. This can also be ensured through strengthen the relationship between employer and the employees through measuring and analyzing job satisfaction, engaging employees in the organization’s processes such as planning and decision making as well as ensuring that conflicts arising within the workplace are settled to enhance unity among employees as well as between employees and employer. Fourthly, offering compensation and benefits to employees. Human resource manager ensures that there is an employee compensation structure in place and sets up reasonable pay practices. He also ensures that employees are offered benefits besides their normal salary earned through their hard work such benefits may include insurance cover, retirement benefits, leave as well as training opportunities. Lack of such services may demoralize the workforce and lower its performance hence leading to losses (Cole, 2000).
Fifth is ensuring compliance with laws related to both labor and employment. Human resource department ensures that employees are aware of laws relating to their workplace as well as those of the federal government affecting them as well as those set by the state and act in accordance with such laws. Non- compliance to these laws may result to discrimination complaints at the workplace, disruptions and confusion in the organization leading to insecurity and unsafety hence impacting negatively on productivity and finally affecting the profitability of the organization.
Next, human resource department offers training and development to its workforce to sharpen their skills and develop their abilities (Miner, 1998). This is necessary in ensuring business success as well as personal growth and advance. It involves offering employees training in all aspects of the organization to enable them to evolve and fit in to a new organizational culture. The organization offers leadership training to managers in efforts to enable them improve on performance management and professional training to the organization’s employees that have newly been admitted into the organization or those seeking to advance in their roles through promotion. Other roles of the human resource department are offering disciplinary action to employees through suspension or firing, determination of the amount of salary to be paid to employees, awarding of best performing workers in each department, developing of the organizations policies as well as conducting performance appraisals.
The succession planning process is important in the human resource department as it enables the manager to train his successor or employees to feel up a higher vacancy or a different position in the organization (Conger, Fulmer, 2003). The succession planning process comprises of six major steps. The first step involves aligning planned decisions with those of the employees. In this step the benefits to be achieved in the long-term as a result of succession planning are analyzed and course of action decided. The step mainly focuses on the critical positions of the organization that enable it to meet its intended objectives. Data related to employees’ projections is collected and used to determine areas of potential risk. In absence of the data, a risk assessment may also be carried out and a comparison made between the existing and imminent vacancies in efforts to determine critical positions in the organization.
The second step entails identification of the organization’s core competencies. In order to be able to effectively manage the plans set up for learning and development, developing an expectations strategy in relation to performance as well as evaluating performance, one needs to fully comprehend the requirements for successful performance in major areas of the organization as well as the critical positions. The process of identifying the organization’s core competencies enables the present and future employees of the organization to understand the major roles and responsibilities associated with a particular position as well as the qualifications and technical skills required in that position for one to perform effectively (Charan, Drotter, Noel, 2001).
The third step, identification of succession management policies involves evaluating the skills and capabilities of current employees using different methods of assessment. From several human resource plans, a strategy is selected to be used in succession planning. This may be a decision to use internal employees or recruit from external sources after evaluating the talent level available in the external sources. To enhance development in this process, a 360 degrees feedback method is used. The fourth step is to establish strategies to be used in succession. This involves strategies related to development, retention and recruitment. These strategies come in handy when determining duties and responsibilities as well as timelines.
The fifth step is to implement the above succession strategies which involves connecting succession planning to human resource practices such as labor planning, compensation and managing performance. These strategies are implemented to maintain commitment at the higher level. The last step in this process is monitoring the succession plan to ascertain its effectiveness. This is done to ensure the succession plan is successful and in case of defects corrective action can be taken. Employees, customers as well as stakeholders can be evaluated in efforts to determine the effectiveness of the plan (Nemethy, 2011).
The following recommendations can be made to improve the succession planning process. First, the process should ensure that the leaders are effectively evaluated against the needs of their future roles this can be done through assessment of the competencies and aspirations to succeed in these role. Secondly, the process should be able to enable the identification of impending talent needs this can be achieved through managers from various departments working together to identify all the critical positions within the organization. Thirdly, the process should not only be able to measure business succession process but also the outcomes associated with the process. Fourthly, the process should be kept simple without addition of complex evaluation criteria to assess the process as a measure of quality and lastly, the process should not only focus on the transitioning but also other roles that are dependent on the process.
In conclusion, an effective business planning process enables organization to develop efficient and effective business plans that act as the organization’s tool to success. It is also handy in attracting and motivating employees to work towards attaining better roles which in turn increases profitability. As a result, businesses are encouraged to embrace succession planning as a way of dealing with uncertainties as well as increasing their firm’s revenue. They are also encouraged to incorporate human resource department in the organization to oversee matters related to employees as well as managing succession planning.
References
Charan, R., Drotter, S., Noel, J. (2001). Business and Economics. The leadership pipeline. USA.
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Cole, G. A. (2000). Management Theory and Practice (5th Ed.). London. Martins the Printers Limited. 328-330.
Conger, J. A. and Fulmer, R.M. (2003). Developing your leadership pipeline. Harvard Business Review 81 (2). p. 76-84
Miner, Nanette, J. (1998) Anonymous evaluations ain’t what they used to be, Training and Development, 52, 3, 12-14.
Nemethy, Les. (2011). Business Exit Planning: Options, value, enhancement and transaction management for business owners. USA: John Wiley and Sons. p. 178.
Sofo, Francesco. (1999). Human Resource Development: perspectives, roles and practice choice. Sydney: Business Professional Publishing.
