Succession planning and talent management

Succession planning is a fairly narrow term and it might be better to consider the area of Talent Management. Talent management is clear a strategic management task and one that should be top of mind for all leaders and managers. HR have a critical role to play but this is as a catalyst, coach, critic and enabler. Running the process side of things can also fall to HR as well as regularly auditing the organisation's bench strength and ensuring that managers are well equipped to think of the longer term as well as immediate job needs when developing people.

Should succession planning focus on in-house promotion or on bringing in "new blood"?
The right answer is, of course, both. The relative balance between external recruitment in in-house promotion should and will depend on a number of factors, including:
** the size of the organisation
** the availability or otherwise of the necessary skills and talents in side and outside the organisation
** mid to long term business plans - are new skills and capabilities needed
** the current bench strength of the organisation - and the pipeline - are their gaps

Part of the consideration needs to be the ability to attract and retain external talent. If the particular skill set is not available readily in the open market - or cannot be acquired at an affordable price - then the organisation will need to focus more on recruiting to ‘feeder roles' and developing the individuals.

Organisations also need to satisfy the ambitions of its high performing people and its future high performers whilst at the same time, bringing new ideas and capabilities into the organisation - thus the need do to do both. Perception is also critical. If there is a perception that all the ‘good' jobs are filled by external candidates then your talent will leave.

Another consideration is the organisations ability to spot talent in external recruits. If a number of poor appointments to senior positions are made by external recruitment this will also give the wrong message to the organisation.

When developing succession plans it can be useful to identify roles that are kept for external recruitment and to use these to attract people to the organisation and subsequently fill other roles.