Talent management and succession planning is an important business strategy that identifies employees who have high potential to assume more responsibility and then prepares them to possibly move into those positions in the future. Succession planning is an important leadership function to properly prepare for inevitable changes that will occur as employees resign, retire, get sick, or die.
Succession plans make sure the mission will continue to run smoothly by first identifying critical positions. Each critical position will then identify high-potential people to potentially be trained or ‘lined up’ for those key positions. Managers will learn valuable strategies for planning for and then laying out a complete succession plan to ensure that high-potential employees are prepared for the next level of responsibility–if it were to happen ‘right now’ or ‘be ready in 36 months.’ Enlisting talent management involves mastering mentorship, motivation, and development of younger professionals who are eager to move into the positions of others who are retiring or departing for other career opportunities.
Each manager will look at the entire organization as well as their own and will develop a useful schematic to begin their short and longer-range plan which includes, among other things, options for developing cross-training and developmental opportunities with other managers. A unified template will help both the short and long-range implementation strategies. Succession Planning often involves the ability to talk to and collaborate with other managers in different parts of the organization about their combined talented employees. By fulfilling this important succession planning strategy, the potential use and development of internal talent is magnified for both the organization – and the talented employees.