By Georgia Kerr, Director of Workforce Solutions at LHH UK & Ireland

Succession planning has always been vital for any business that wants to future-proof itself. Even if your organisation has great leadership at this moment in time, what happens when they retire or move to another organisation? As sports fans will be all too aware – it’s about the strength of the whole bench, not just the starting team. 

As Covid-19 restrictions start to ease, the importance of succession planning has been brought into even sharper focus. We’re likely to see a flurry of changes at leadership level across multiple business sectors as people re-evaluate their career and lifestyle choices moving forward. One study found that 26% of workers are planning to leave their job when the pandemic comes to an end – with 72% of this group stating that the time during lockdown has caused them to rethink their skill set. Half of these employees have actively sought out reskilling and retraining during this time in order to change jobs. In short, businesses need to start thinking about succession planning strategies right now, if they don’t already. 

What is succession planning? 

In a nutshell, succession planning is the process of ensuring that business critical roles can be filled as seamlessly as possible. It’s the process of not only identifying, but developing potential future leaders and talent. 

It’s not about finding a like-for-like replacement for a previous leader, but to ensure that the organisation is future-proofing and developing its leaders’ competencies for the future. This gives the organisation the capabilities it requires to deliver future strategic plans and also prepare for the unexpected. 

When planning for leadership succession there are three key elements to consider: Organisational alignment, a data-driven approach and agility to change. 

Organisational alignment

However flat the workplace is, changes across senior teams bring an increased need for employees to be able to lean into ambiguity to balance strategy, operations and results in a fast-paced, agile way to adapt to the ever-evolving needs of the workforce. Organisations must plan for lateral, not just linear succession, to give internal candidates exposure to increasingly complex roles that test their abilities. In this way, and to encourage employees’ progression, succession planning should shift focus from one top spot to many, and in turn help in the development of new leadership models.

That said, it is also important to consider external assignments to bring in external perspectives and ideas to the existing workforce. These external hires must be strategic and not necessarily an exact match for the job description.

Data-driven approach

The goal of succession planning is not only to ensure the best possible pool of candidates, but also to ensure diversity and inclusion – the latter of which might consciously need to be planned in. To ensure that succession planning is as bias-free as possible, organisations should use analytics to make decisions using robust and validated tools and methodologies.

Changes at leadership level can often shine the spotlight on inclusivity even further. Inclusivity has long been a priority of businesses, however now any incoming leader will be operating under a hybrid working environment. This means that they will need to be able to make everyone in the organisation, including within their own direct team, feel included. Whether employees are working in the office or from home, leaders require the emotional intelligence to understand employees’ new requirements and expectations in terms of flexibility. As such, leaders must step up to address these whilst ensuring the workforce remains engaged and energised.

Agility to change 

Succession planning is also possible for jobs that do not yet exist; and this is why it should not focus solely on existing and previous employees and job roles. Research from LinkedIn has shown that the top skills required for organisations are creativity, persuasion, collaboration and adaptability – skills that allow employees to quickly and easily shift and adapt to change.

Looking to the future, organisations must ensure that they are building a renewable and not a replaceable workforce. For example, roles such as community manager, social media manager and virtual reality consultant are just some of the many jobs that didn’t exist five or so years ago, and we do not know what the future will bring in terms of new roles. For this reason, it is vital to ensure that workforces learn to change and adapt to new challenges and opportunities to help prepare for future changes.

As with any strategic organisational changes, it is important to remember that succession planning cannot be done overnight. GE’s CEO succession planning took six years for example. Considering a shorter and shorter tenure of CEOs, practically this means that the moment a CEO is appointed, it’s almost too late to plan for their succession! Remember – it’s about building bench strength, but should never be only internally focused.