Amplifying the employee voice in succession planning career conversations

So often, succession planning conversations start from the perspective of the Organisation with questions like, ‘what type of leaders will take our organisation forwards’ or ‘which high potentials best fit our current leadership model’?

These questions and others like them are undoubtedly important and yet solid and robust career conversations need to consider amplifying the voice of the employee to help shape effective succession planning strategies.

The sense of urgency around succession planning has been brought into sharper focus in the COVID-19 era due to longer staff absences and the increasingly complex hybrid working practices that are becoming more common place. Those challenges multiply further when you factor in race, gender and disability. So how can we encourage organisations to find ways to adapt succession planning processes if businesses are to evolve and succeed in post-covid times?

One of the challenges with much of the activity around succession planning in organisations is that the process often doesn't include a perspective on how any potential successor sees themselves in the future.  Traditionally, organisations have focused on creating lists of successors, plotting people on nine-box grids and finessing descriptions of 'talent', but fail to explore the career aspirations of the individual.

Knowing how challenging it can be to identify potential successors, talent managers need to find better ways to identify people with a good skills match or even a desire to move into the post you are planning for. Implementing better and more directed career conversations in order to elicit personal and professional ambitions from individuals and using succession planning tools to record and manage them on an ongoing basis will help you to identify emergent potential and any barriers to them, and tease out what tasks and learning is needed to obtain the necessary skills and experience. Having more coherent conversations will also help to shape the thinking behind what will make a good future leader and your business priorities.

Tools like our Talent Successor® online software enable you to take proactive steps to develop future leaders by amplifying the voice of the employee and recording progression towards their career goals. You’ll be able to assess current talent and future needs and identify any skills gaps in potential successors. Our software is easy to set up, adaptable for your organisational structure and talent model and engages both employee and manager in ongoing career conversations, all for as little as the price of a cup of coffee per person per month! It’s time to amplify the employee voice and add breadth and depth to your future leader talent pools.

Find out more about how Talent Successor® has worked for some of our customers in these case studies and more about the Succession Planning process in our Succession Planning eBook.

1. Check out this case study from McDonald's - read time 10 minutes

 2. Sign-up for our Succession Planning eBook - in sections, each 5 minutes

3. Check out this case Study from HomeServe - read time 10 minutes