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Understanding Succession Planning

How can succession planning help your business?
Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 6 lessons.
Course: On-Demand
Advanced Provider Stephanie Douglas  6 Lessons ·  18m  in Arabic, English, Spanish 

Course Description

In this course, Understanding Succession Planning, you’ll learn about the basic phases of succession planning, like identifying vulnerable positions and successors, creating a succession planning committee, refining a talent pipeline, and developing your internal talent. You’ll also learn some strategies for forecasting when positions will become vacant so you can meet these needs accordingly.

This course also offers some tips for making your succession planning a success by leveraging buy-in from company leadership. Succession planning helps companies keep their performance stable, especially during times of change. It helps you identify which positions are most important to fill and potential vacancies that could arise due to retirement, structural changes, or turnover. It also takes a proactive approach by planning how to retain institutional knowledge that could be lost when employees leave the organization. Some staffing needs can be anticipated, like retirement or a transfer to a new position, but some are less predictable. People can leave for other companies, retire unexpectedly, or be terminated. It may take time to manage and develop your talent to meet these needs, so it’s important to forecast future needs. Having a plan in place helps the company when unexpected circumstances arise. For succession planning to succeed, you’ll need senior managers and leaders to support the plan, and this course will cover how to use analytics to craft a narrative that combats resistance to the succession plan.

What You'll Learn

  • Identify vulnerable positions and potential successors as part of succession planning
  • Describe the characteristics of a talent pipeline and refine it to develop internal talent
  • Analyze employees using growth potential, flight risk, and turnover rate
  • Forecast when positions will become vacant so staffing needs can be met accordingly
  • Examine strategies to gain leadership buy-in for succession planning
  • Identify the key components of succession planning, including creating a succession planning committee

Key Takeaways

  • Succession planning helps companies keep their performance stable, especially during times of change.
  • It helps identify which positions are most important to fill and potential vacancies arising from retirement, structural changes, or turnover.
  • A proactive succession plan helps retain institutional knowledge that could be lost when employees leave the organization.
  • Some staffing needs can be anticipated, such as retirement or transfers, while others are less predictable, so forecasting future needs is important.
  • For succession planning to succeed, senior managers and leaders must support the plan, and analytics can be used to craft a narrative that combats resistance.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this course?

You'll learn about the basic phases of succession planning, including identifying vulnerable positions and successors, creating a succession planning committee, refining a talent pipeline, and developing your internal talent, as well as strategies for forecasting when positions will become vacant.

Why is succession planning important?

Succession planning helps companies keep their performance stable, especially during times of change, by identifying which positions are most important to fill and taking a proactive approach to retaining institutional knowledge that could be lost when employees leave.

How does this course address resistance to a succession plan?

The course covers how to use analytics to craft a narrative that combats resistance to the succession plan and how to leverage buy-in from company leadership, since senior managers and leaders need to support the plan for it to succeed.

What topics do the lessons cover?

The lessons include an Introduction, an Overview of Succession Planning, Forecasting Future Needs (Parts 1 and 2), Making Succession Planning a Success, and a Test Your Knowledge section.

What skills does this course focus on?

This course focuses on Workforce Development and Workforce Optimization.