Most organizations are unprepared for the loss of employees who hold key roles.

• The departure of employees in key roles results in the loss of valuable knowledge, core business relationships, and profits.
• Pending retirements in key roles create workforce risks and potentially impact business continuity.

Planning and executing on key role transition can take years. CIOs should prepare now to mitigate the risk of loss later.

• The number of organizations which have not engaged in succession planning is 56%; they haven’t identified at-risk key roles, or successors for those roles.
• Analyzing key roles at the incumbent and successor level introduces real-life, individual-focused factors that have a major impact on role-related risk.

• Plan for the transfer of critical knowledge held by key role incumbents.
• Explore alternative work arrangements to ensure sufficient time to prepare successors.
• Define formal transition plans for all employees in at-risk key roles and their successors.

(Source: McLean & Company, 2013; N=120)

A survey done by SHRM and AARP found similar results: 41% of HR professionals said their organizations have done nothing and don’t plan to do anything to prepare for a possible worker shortage as Boomers retire.

To make matters worse, 74% of organizations have no formal process for facilitating knowledge transfer between individuals, so knowledge will be lost.

(Source: McLean & Company, 2013; N=120)

Talent Review

Succession Planning

Knowledge Transfer

Critical Role Identifier

Key Roles Succession Plan

Key Role Profiles

Individual Talent Profiles

Key Role Transition Plans

Inefficiency due to “reinvention of the wheel.” When workers leave and don’t effectively transfer their knowledge, duplication of effort to solve problems and find solutions occurs.

Reduced capacity to innovate. Older workers know what works and what doesn’t, what’s new and what’s not. They can identify the status quo faster to make way for novel thinking.

Loss of competitive advantage. Losing knowledge and/or established client relationships hurts your asset base and stifles growth.

Increased vulnerability. Losing knowledge can impede your organizational ability to identify, understand, and mitigate risks. You’ll have to learn through experience all over again.

Succession planning limits disruption to daily operations and minimizes recruitment costs:

• The average time to fill a vacant role externally in the US is approximately 43 days (Workable). Succession planning can reduce this via a talent pool of ready-now successors.

Effective succession planning is a tool for engaging, developing, and retaining employees:

• Of departing employees, 45% cite lack of opportunities for career advancement as the moderate, major, or primary reason they left (McLean & Company Exit Survey, 2018, N=7,530).

Knowledge is a strategic asset, and succession planning can help retain, grow, and capitalize on it:

• Retaining the experience and expertise of individuals departing from critical roles supports and enhances the quality of innovation (Harvard Business Review, 2008).

Conduct a talent review to identify key roles

Succession planning helps you assess which key roles are most at risk

Utilize methods that make it easy to apply the knowledge in day-to-day practice.

• Business continuity
• The right people, in the right positions, at the right time
• Retention due to employee development & growth

• IT success
• Decreased impact of sudden departures
• Improved performance

1. Identify critical roles
2. Assess talent

1. Identify successor pool
2. Develop successors
3. Select successors

1. Identify critical knowledge
2. Select knowledge transfer methods
3. Document role transition plans

• Documented business priorities
• Identified critical roles including required skills and knowledge that support achievement of business strategy

• Key at-risk roles identified.
• Potential successors for key roles identified.
• Gap assessment between key role incumbents and potential successors.

• Critical knowledge risks identified.
• Appropriate knowledge transfer methods selected.
• Documented knowledge transfer initiatives for key role transition plans.

DIY Toolkit

Guided Implementation

Workshop

Consulting

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Call #3: Review key role criteria. Explain information collection process.

Call #5: Analyze gaps between key roles and successors for key considerations.

Call #7: Review selected transfer methods.

2.1 Identify Successors

2.2 Develop Successors

2.3 Select Successors

3.1 Identify Critical Knowledge

3.2 Select Transfer Methods

3.3 Document Role Transition Plan

Key roles are:

• Held by the most senior people in the organization, who carry the bulk of leadership and decision-making responsibility.
• Highly technical or specialized, and therefore difficult to replace.
• Tied closely to unique or proprietary processes or possess knowledge that cannot be procured externally.
• Critical to the continuation of business and cannot be left vacant without risking business operations.

Info-Tech Insight

Losing employees in key roles without adequate preparation for their departure has a direct impact on the bottom line in terms of disrupted productivity, lost knowledge, severed relationships, and missed opportunities.

Identifying key roles is the first step in a range of workforce management activities because it helps establish organizational needs and priorities, as well as focusing planning effort.

A talent review allows you to identify the knowledge and skills you need today and for the long term.

Knowing what you need is the first step in determining what you have and what you need to keep.

• A talent review is an analytic planning process used to ensure a work unit has the right people, in the right place, at the right time, and for the right cost in order to successfully execute its business strategy. It allows organizations to:
• Evaluate workforce demographics, review skills, and conduct position inventories.
• Evaluate business continuity risk from a talent perspective by identifying potential workforce shortages.
• Identify critical positions, critical skills for each position, and percentage of critical workers retiring to assess the potential impact of losing them.
• Look at the effect of loss on new product development, revenues, costs, and business strategic objectives.

Caution

A talent review is a high-level planning process which does not take individual employees into consideration. Succession planning looks at individuals and will be discussed in Phase 2.

A talent review gets you to think in terms of:

• Where your organization wants to be in five years.
• What skills the organization needs to meet business goals between now and then.
• How it can be best positioned for the longer-term future.

Note: Planning against a time frame longer than five years is difficult because uncertainty in the external business environment will have unforeseen effects. Revisit your plan annually and update it, considering changes.

Info-tech insight

Traditionally, succession planning has only addressed top management roles. However, until you look at the evidence, you won’t know if these are indeed high-value roles, and you may be missing other critical roles further down the hierarchy.

Use the Critical Role Identifier to facilitate the identification of critical roles with your leaders.