Succession planning toolkit

Identify significant business challenges in the next 1–5 years

Your agency’s strategic plan is a great place to start in identifying current and future challenges. If your agency doesn’t have a strategic plan or it is not drilled down enough to your department’s specific strategies and priorities, an environmental scan can provide you with enough information to start the succession planning process.

Environmental Scan Worksheet

Environmental scans can be conducted during a brainstorming session at a team meeting, as part of a management retreat, through surveying or talking with stakeholders, or by a combination of these methods.

What’s happening inside and outside your agency…

Identify critical positions that will be needed to support business continuity

Since the next step involves identifying critical positions that your succession plan will be built around, we recommend your agency’s HR Manager and/or assigned HR consultant be involved in this part of the process.

Review positions at the manager level and above to determine which positions are key. Also, consider including individual contributor positions that require a particularly unique skillset, are traditionally hard to recruit for, or have a high turnover rate. Evaluate the impact each position has in achieving the strategic goals and objectives, as well as the vacancy risk and marketability of the incumbent.

Title:

Position Status: (filled or vacant)

Position impact: (high, medium, or low) Assessment of “position impact” should be based on a prioritized list of the department’s mission, goals, objectives, and strategic plan.

Vacancy risk: (high, medium or low) Assessment of “vacancy risk” should be based on factors such as the incumbent’s retirement eligibility, marketability, etc.

Identify competencies, skills and institutional knowledge that are critical success factors

After you determine which positions are mission critical and have a significant vacancy risk, identify competencies, skills and institutional knowledge that are critical success factors for each of the positions that require a succession plan.

1. What unique institutional knowledge or relationships are inherent to the success of this position?
2. Does anyone else have this knowledge in the organization? If so, who?
3. How critical is it that this knowledge is documented and shared? (high, medium, or low)
4. Plan for sharing knowledge:

• process documentation
• mentoring
• job aids
• job rotation
• job shadowing
• other

Consider qualified and interested employees

After you have evaluated which positions require a succession plan, the next step is to consider if there are current staff members ready to successfully assume the role or have potential to grow into it over time.

Working with leadership, your HR Manager or assigned HR consultant, determine which staff members are currently eligible or may be eligible within 3-5 years for prioritized positions.

Note: If you are conducting this succession planning exercise as a leadership team, be aware that qualified and interested employees are often not distributed evenly within an organization. Be willing to have honest conversations and remember that just because an individual is not identified as high potential doesn’t mean that they are not a strong individual contributor, nor should they be denied access to professional development activities.

Name:

Position title:

Department:

Years in job:

Current supervisor:

Target position:

Target position key competencies:

Ready:

now

within 1 year

within 2 years

within 3-5 years

Action plan:

Select the competencies individuals will need to be successful in positions and to meet identified business challenges

Preparing an individual to progress in the organization is not a cookie-cutter process. It often takes a combination of formal training, thoughtful coaching, trusted mentorship, and key assignments. Managers and executive leadership play a key role in creating access/removing barriers to key assignments and providing honest feedback

Managers should be having ongoing career development conversations with all employees in addition to their annual performance reviews. Career Development conversations with qualified and interested employees should be focused on closing the gaps and/or strengthening existing skills and competencies.

Career development should be a part of your organization’s regular HR practices and not only reserved for qualified and interested employees.
along the way.

Long-term goals

What are your long-term career goals over the next 3–5 years? Describe how your long-term goals align with the goals and priorities of your department?

1.

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Short term goals

What are your short-term career goals over the next 3–5 years? Describe how your short-term goals align with the goals and priorities of your department?

1.

2.

3.

Skills and competency requirements

What skills or competencies do you need to build to reach your goals?

This career development plan provides an opportunity to demonstrate your career potential and is not a guarantee of a promotion. The plan should be evaluated at least every six months and adjusted as needed based on organizational and/or personal priorities.

Individual succession planning questionnaire

The questions below are designed to assist in identifying contacts, processes and procedures, institutional knowledge, and competencies needed for your position. The knowledge, experience, and competencies should reflect the actual needs of the position, which are not necessarily the knowledge, experience, and competencies you bring to the position. This questionnaire should be updated as needed or a minimum of once a year.

1. Over the next five years, what are/will be the key responsibilities of this position
2. What key competencies are needed for this position?
3. What expertise and experience are needed for this position?
4. What are the interim key responsibilities to be reassigned until this position is filled?
5. What information would have been useful for you to know when you first came into this position?
6. What information have you learned since that would be helpful for others in this position to know?
7. What do you consider to be the most valuable and/or unique knowledge that you hold in your current role? Do you have knowledge that is hard to replace or that no one else has?
8. Who are the people you interact with most frequently (internally and externally)? Is there anyone for whom you are the main or only point of contact?
9. Is there any key documentation that you find particularly useful to your role? Are these readily available to others? Procedures, manuals, software, reference materials, websites, newsletters?
10. In your position, what is generally likely to go wrong, and how do you usually respond to or resolve problems? How have you identified and managed potential risks or problems in the past?
11. What mistakes do you think have been made in the past that you think could be avoided in the future?
12. Are there other roles that you perform (officially or unofficially) in the organization?

Identify 10 experiences, training courses, or developmental opportunities that would prepare someone to perform this job well.
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Supervisor’s quick checklist for unexpected vacancies

As much as we try to plan, sometime vacancies occur unexpectedly. When there is not enough time to take a more comprehensive approach, use the checklist below to make sure no balls are dropped in the transition.

1. Identify the most important parts of position that is becoming vacant. Try to keep this to around 4 main buckets of work.
2. Identify who would pick up the elements of work that are most essential?
3. Bias check: Ask yourself, am I distributing this work fairly and equitably?
4. What development, coaching or assistance needs to be provided to get there?

Consider using the table format below to record essential work and next steps…

Succession planning do’s and don’ts

Succession planning is the cornerstone to consistently fulfill your agency’s mission. It provides managers with the ability to home in on the specific competencies necessary to fill any position. It also provides an opportunity for managers to have meaningful conversations with employees on their goals, competencies and valuable work they provide every day. Here are some do’s and don’ts on utilizing the succession planning pilot tools/resources in an effort to maximize your approach.

Manager prep checklist for development conversations

Before going into a career development discussion, managers should prepare by reflecting on the following questions:

1. What are the employee’s career goals? Are they realistic? Are they compatible with the organizational goals and needs?
2. What actions has the employee completed so far? How successful were they?
3. In what areas do you think the employee needs to develop new or more refined skills?
4. Are there additional skills or competencies the employee should focus on to achieve their desired career goal?
5. What resources, training, or experience can you provide to help them reach their goal?
6. Is there additional knowledge, certification, or education the employee needs to acquire?
7. What shifts in current priority or workload can you accommodate to ensure the employee has bandwidth to pursue development opportunities?

The Knowledge Transfer Project:

• Identify key performers and positions;
• Document their business, organizational, and personal knowledge; and
• Document customer perspectives of why the key performer is successful in the position.

In this way, the agency can document the tacit knowledge the key performer holds and help the agency to think about how to cultivate that knowledge, skill or ability in others.  It will also help clarify what a future replacement must bring to the position.

Use the workforce data in the dashboard below to inform your business strategies and goals. Filter the dashboard to your agency and view your workforce by age group and tenure for both managers and non-managers.