Look at the implications for succession planning policy and succession planning practice arising from move towards talent consumerisation. Succession Plans need to focus on a shorter timeframe, and take into account career plans and mobility in the talent review and succession planning meeting.
Consumerisation of talent. This is the change that is happening in the behaviour and attitude to work, employment and careers often seen in those now early in their careers. It's a change that is taking place - right now.
The emergence of the 'career portfolio' has forced organisations to ensure a strong and obvious alignment between their succession planning approach and how talented employees think about careers.
But what does this mean for us working in HR?
We've summarised what we see as the critical implications for HR and Talent professionals.
| Talent consumerisation suggests… | This means for us in HR… |
| Succession planning plans that stretch out beyond 3 years or so into the future may be a waste of time | We need to have more robust, shorter-term plans which may require more system support and better talent analytics and succession planning software due to the changeability of the plans |
| Organisations are exposed to significant risk and unnecessary cost if their succession planning approach does not include real mobility and career data in their succession planning template | We must find a way of talking about mobility more honestly, and ensure that career conversations are happening, that this data is being recorded and used in talent reviews and succession discussions. |
| We need to think about whether talented people are working for the right manager as part of succession planning and talent reviews | We need to be able to gather data on engagement, retention, promotion, performance etc. by manager and use it. We need to set clear expectations that inadequate line management will no longer be the only key part of a job that people are allowed to be poor at |
| That we cannot continue to make assumptions and guesses about individual career aspirations, or exclude them from the conversation. This exposes the organisation to huge risks. We need to measure succession planning differently | We must ensure that we have stress-tested succession plans against different scenarios to understand how robust they are. We need to measure what actually happens, not how many boxes have names in. We need to be able to trust data on career aspirations and mobility |
| That we need to tie-in succession planning with strategic workforce planning to understand where the key succession risks to business strategy lie, and to understand where a different strategy is needed to address risks | We need to adopt a more contextual and prioritised approach to succession planning – aim to have greater success in focusing on a smaller number of more important succession areas. Need to include data on external talent availability and identify critical roles relative to strategy not manager opinion |
You may also like to hear Professor Nick Kemsley talking about this in this video.
You may like to read more about how to get started with succession planning. If you want to read further, request our eBook – The Ultimate Guide to Succession Planning.
When you're ready to talk about how we could support your succession plan strategy cloud-based succession planning software - or just to see some succession planning examples, do get it touch.
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