Succession Planning - Literature review Example

Succession planning can be said to be a process that helps determine critical roles within any given company and its main role is that of identifying and assessing the possible successors and thus providing them with appropriate skills and experience for the present and the future organizations opportunities. In short, succession planning will mainly comprise of some of these fundamental steps; The issue of recruitment and/or staffing within the Organizations development and Training, the organizations must train their employees to help develop their skills, knowledge, and abilities preparing those who will take over roles for advancement/promotion into their ever more complex and demanding roles- this is what is termed as compensation and performance management the organizations must be in a position to prepare to retain their employees or replace the existing superior employees According Murphy (2009) in Her Journal; Succession planning in practice, the typical activities that will be covered by any would be succession planning will include; the determination of the skills and roles that will be or are very critical for growth within the company identifying and understanding the role played by developmental needs of the employees to fill in those positions ensuring that all the key and valued employees will understand their career paths and the roles that they will be developed into to help them to fill in The organizations should be willing to train their existing workforce for skills and positions not existing currently in their company/organizations i.e. they should train people for positions and skills not presently offered in their organizations/company understand the time needed to backfill key roles organizations should try and enrich their existing succession plans by regularly having executive discussions of their employees and posts, this then leads to the organizations identifying their top performers in the existing departments and thus making sure that they will be satisfied and engaged to stay within the organization for long In all the organizations that exist whether in the public or private sectors, there is a great need to find people that will help fill in the top and key leadership positions. This process needs to be well managed and that is where succession planning comes in handy, back in the days during the traditional era, the large blue chip organizations had a very well organized and secretive internal succession plans for their employees who would then fill in the existing key posts through proper planning to help shape their career paths and thus provide necessary range of experience. These schemes were able to work at a very reasonably and well organized stable environment that had their structures fixed and long-term careers. This kind of succession planning declined in the 1990’s due to the rapid changes hat had or were occurring within the business sectors, the argument being how one could plan ahead when they were not sure of the existence of the same job in the future? The result was that organizations the opted for top jobs recruitment from outside their organizations. The traditional succession planning had failed to take into consideration the existing non-managerial roles- for instance the case of a brilliant scientist who preferred staying in his research role position and might be very crucial to the organization in the near future. In the current trend of ever growing skills shortage and the lack of confidence in leadership potentials of the organizations existing workforce, the lost interest in succession planning was revived. Take the case of the CIPD/DDI survey on global leadership in 2008-2009 which showed that only 44% of the leaders in a given organization will rate other leaders within the same organization as either excellent or good. The current succession planning is evidently different from the traditional old version since it has a broader vision and closer links to a wide link of talent management practices. Tansley et al. (2007) in a very recent survey; War on talent?, Have found evidence that talent management through association leads to succession planning becoming more and more important in any would be economic downturn. This means that during very uncertain times it will be more significant than ever had been for an organization to know where their key talents sit within their organization and how they will develop some of their employees to help meet long-term and short term critical issues within their business/organization. According to Murray, (2002), workers in any organization and their skills are one thing that the competing organizations cannot help imitate. Meaning that over the years, human resource management and/or practices that are associated with it have over the years become accepted by managers in many of organizations as an important strategic lever that helps ensure the continuing success of the organization in question. This can be said to be true in the vocational training and education as would be the case in any other sectors. Recently the issue of workforce development has turned to become a vital key feature within the management of registered training organizations. When one looks at what was once called personal management in traditional emphasis that dwelt with the regulation of managerial power within organizations, the regulation was mainly strengthened in Australia and America through increasing of government regulations of employment conditions. The 1980's and the 1990's saw different concepts of the human resource management issue begin to gain ground and at the heart of this new approach was a belief; properly managed people will give an organization an added competitive advantage leading to a significant difference between personnel management and human resource management. Since organizations will differ in, scope, size and type, it is thus very difficult to precisely point to a single model of the succession planning concept. Nevertheless, it will be a common occurrence for succession planning to only cover mainly the senior jobs within their organization, plus longer and short-term successors for the same posts. In the old succession planning model, it was purely and mainly about the organizational needs within the given organizations, people gained experience by moving up the ladder within their organizations (increased salary and/or status being the main motivating factors to the employees within the organizations)while on the other hand the modern version goes ahead and takes into account growing recognition that people, both men and women are increasingly in need of making their own wise career decisions and thus being able to perfectly balance their careers and their family responsibilities. This said the emphasis will thus be all about the balancing of individual aspirations with those being held by their employers, thus customizing their moves to meet needs of their families, changing skill requirements within their organization and their employees. In the current trend, organizations will tend to be less hierarchical having fewer management layers and a sideway movement into a totally different job possible having no added salary to the employee. Another great difference of the traditional succession model to the current one is that traditionally people moved up to a specialist’s job but the current model has its main focus will be on identification and development of groups of many jobs to help enable the potential successors be quickly and efficiently identified for varied roles within the organization. Mcgee, (2007);Talent management and succession planning, asserts that it is prudent for those that are responsible for succession planning within any organization to know as much as they can about the future of their organization, changes likely to happen and how the changes in question may affect their roles in the organization and thus the skills they need to posses to sustain themselves within the organization. This being a hard task will only require that a close relationship will have to exist between the employees and their top managers who will be solely responsible for shaping the current and future of the organization. In the traditional succession model it was believed that the motivation of those employees not on the fast track would be greatly affected and thus sapped by the knowledge that they were not onto the fast track thus great secrecy existed within this model. The case is different now that the modern succession plan has gradually and effectively reduced this secrecy through advertising for available job vacancies. Now it is widely believed that the employees need to Comprehend, the methods that may be used or are used in judging the potential successors, the Succession process and the kinds of jobs considered best suited for each individual. In all the organizations, new and energized blood is vital since it comes in with newer approaches and/or ideas that may help the organization while they fill in the anticipated roles within the organization. However a right balance within the organization is very vital since the organization can’t rely too much on outsider or their own insiders, critics suggesting a balance between the two sides. There is thus a need for Succession planning to be owned by the line managers within their organizations with their chief executives having a key role of ensuring that succession planning will be given the importance it thus deserves by the other existing senior managers. The human factors and relations approaches were greatly absorbed into a very broad behavioral science that grew into a movement in 1950's and 1960's, this period saw the production of some very influential theories regarding the motivating factors of human performance. For instance the Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs helped provide individuals with a focus as to why they wanted to work. According to Maslaw’s human needs people satisfied ascending series of their needs; survival, through security to self-actualization. It was thus felt that individuals would be able to give more to organizations if they were able to gain satisfaction from their employments. Employment should thus be designed in a way that is challenging and interesting to help gain commitment of the organizations employees which is a vital and central role of HRM (Huselid, 1998). Conclusion One of the major questions that come into mind regarding succession planning is whether it is worth the input and time. According to Maslaw’s human needs, human employment satisfaction is vital since it increases production. Succession planning can be said to be a process that helps determine critical roles within any given company and its main role is that of identifying and assessing the possible successors and thus providing them with appropriate skills and experience for the present and the future organizations opportunities. In short, succession planning will mainly comprise of some of these fundamental steps; The issue of recruitment and/or staffing within the Organizations preparing those who will take over roles for advancement/promotion into their ever more complex and demanding roles- this is what is termed as compensation and performance management The organizations must be in a position to prepare to retain their employees or replace the existing superior employees. References Becker, B.E. and Huselid, M.A. (1998). High performance work systems and firm performance: a synthesis of research and managerial implications. Personnel and Human Resources Management, 16: 53-101. Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P.R., Quinn-Mills, D. and Walton, R.E. (1984). Managing human assets. Free Press, New York. Beer, M and Spector, B (1985). Corporate wide transformations in human resource management in R.E. Walton and P.R. Lawrence (eds) Human resource management: trends and challenges, Harvard Business School Press, Boston. Belanger, P., Giles, A. and Murray, G. (2002). Workplace innovation and the role of institutions in G. Murray, J. Belanger, A Giles and P. Lapointe (eds) Work and employment relations in the high commitment workplace, Continuum, London. Cannon, J.A. and Mcgee, R. (2007) Talent management and succession planning. CIPD Toolkit. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Hirsh, W. (2000) Succession planning demystified. Brighton: Institute for Employment Studies. Jensen, K. (2009 Making succession plans work for your company. Workspan. Vol 52, No 5, May. pp57-58,60,62. Mccready. T. and Hatcher, C. (2009) How to align career development and succession planning. Workspan. Vol 52, No,3, March. pp60-63. Munro, A. (2005) Practical succession management: how to future-proof your organisation. Aldershot: Gower. Murphy, N. (2009) Succession planning in practice. IRS Employment Review. No 917, 16 March. Newing, R. (2008) Follow my leader. Edge. June. pp30-35.  Tansley et al. (2007) Talent: strategy, management, measurement. Research into practice. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Read More