25 Define Succession Management

This chapter contains the following:

Succession Management: Explained

Creating and Updating Succession Plans: Examples

Succession Plans, Talent Pools, and Talent Reviews: How They Work Together

FAQs for Define Succession Management

Succession Management: Explained

Succession management enables your organization to develop and maintain succession plans to determine who will eventually replace personnel currently in key positions. You can also track and manage employees in talent pools. Using the Oracle Fusion Succession Management business process, you can determine who is ready to transition to positions before the positions are vacant to ensure a smooth transition, and provide visibility to the appropriate individuals to manage the process.

Selecting the Succession Plan Type

You can create two types of succession plans: Job or Position, or Incumbent.

The Job or Position plan type allows you to create plans to ensure one or more potential candidates have been identified to fill a key role or position. You can create a plan to cover a particular job in a specific business unit of department, or throughout an entire organization.

Use the Incumbent plan type to create a plan to replace a particular individual.

Adding Candidates to a Succession Plan

As the succession plan owner, you can select people from your organization who are candidates to move into the position for which the succession plan was created. If you have identified suitable candidates for the position, you can select them directly. Or, you can use the best-fit analysis to determine the workers whose person profiles most closely match the job or position profile. Succession plans can have multiple owners from different organizations, so the plan can be available to and include candidates from several organizations.

Determining Candidate Readiness

Succession plans give you the ability to specify a candidate's readiness to assume a job or position. You can use criteria such as time frames or number of experiences, depending on how your organization determines candidate readiness. You select a readiness level based on your knowledge of the candidate and whether the candidate has gaps between their current competencies and the skills required for the new position. By selecting time frames or other criteria for candidates, you can determine the bench strength for the position and your organization. You can add additional candidates if you have too narrow a pipeline.

Associating Talent Pools with Succession Plans

You can associate talent pools with succession plans to track and manage the development of candidates. Because you can add development goals to a talent pool, associating one with a succession plan enables you to create goals for the candidates that will help prepare them for the job or position for which the plan has been created. You can associate a succession plan with multiple talent pools. A talent pool can also be associated with multiple succession plans. You are not restricted to adding members to a plan only from associated pools.

Accessing Succession Plans

Succession plans can be viewed and edited in the Succession Plans work area, or in a talent review meeting. To view or edit a particular plan in the Succession Plans work area, you must be an owner. Owners for a plan are selected when the succession plan is created or edited.

Talent review meeting facilitators can configure meetings to enable succession plans and talent pools to be available in the meeting. In the meeting, facilitators, taking direction from meeting participants, can create new succession plans, and view and edit plans to add candidates and determine their readiness. They can also view talent pools and add members to the plans.

You can view succession plan and talent pool detail information for a worker on the Succession tab of the talent Details dialog. This dialog is available to succession plan owners from the candidate list on the Succession Plans work area and to talent review meeting facilitators from the Oracle Fusion Talent Review dashboard. The succession planning tab displays information about a worker's potential successors as well as the worker's candidacy in succession plans and membership in talent pools.

Creating and Updating Succession Plans: Examples

Use succession plans to ensure the smooth transition from one incumbent in a position to the next. These examples illustrate scenarios for creating and managing succession plans for different circumstances.

Creating a Succession Plan for a Job

A vice-president of InFusion Corporation informs you that the current Channel Sales vice-president of the North American division, Janson Ma, is being groomed to be promoted within a year. On the Organization chart, you see that the Channel Sales vice-president position has no current succession plan. As the human resource specialist, you are charged with creating a succession plan for the Channel Sales VP of North America position. Your organization requires that only current sales directors are eligible to succeed Janson.

On the Succession Management Overview page you create a plan to reflect this position in North America. For the plan type, you select Job or position as the plan type, and select the North America business unit. As per your directive, from the Select Candidates page, you search for and add candidates to the plan who are directors of channel sales from locations throughout the world. Using the best-fit feature, you find the sales directors whose person profiles closely match the vice-president job profile. You rate the candidates according to their readiness, and note their risk of loss to determine if they are expected to be around long enough to be attractive candidates. For those currently living outside the region, you also note their willingness to relocate, particularly, since they must work in North America. You delete any candidates who are either at high risk of loss or unwilling to relocate.

Creating a Plan for Multiple Positions

InFusion organization has many outlets throughout North America, each of which requires a general manager. Each year the organization loses 10 percent of its general managers as a result of promotion or attrition. As a result, the organization needs a steady supply of candidates to succeed incumbents who currently occupy the general manager positions. A talent review meeting is coming up for the organization in which candidates will be evaluated and discussed to fill a current opening.

You create a succession plan for the Job or position plan type, and select General Manager as the job. There is an existing talent pool for general manager position that you associate with your succession plan. You select the option to include plan candidates in the pool to ensure that any new candidates you add are added automatically to the associated talent pool. You add candidates from the existing talent pool, and also select others who are not yet in it. For the candidates with whom you are familiar, you determine both their readiness level and rate their risk and impact of loss. When you schedule the talent review meeting, you associate both the succession plan and talent pool to the meeting so they appear on the meeting dashboard. During the meeting, any candidates who are part of the review population of the meeting will be thoroughly rated, and additional candidates will be added. The meeting participants determine that Elizabeth White is the candidate who is best qualified and decide to offer her the open position. After Elizabeth accepts the offer, you remove her from the plan, but keep it open to add new candidates and update it for future vacancies.

Succession Plans, Talent Pools, and Talent Reviews: How They Work Together

Using talent pools and succession plans with talent review meetings enables you to manage workers' career progressions and plan for vacancies in key jobs and positions.

Talent Pools and Succession Plans

Talent pools enable you to group workers for the purpose of managing their development, training, and other goals. Succession plans enable you to group candidates and track their readiness to move into a specific job, position, or to replace an incumbent. Talent pools can be used either with or without succession plans.

You typically use talent pools without succession plans, so that you can track workers' development, but that development is not tied to a particular role. For example, InFusion Corporation maintains talent pools to track how their high-potential workers are progressing, but the workers will eventually move in various directions at various rates.

You can use talent pools with succession plans in situations where you want to track development progress of workers as potential candidates for a specific job, position, or incumbent. For example, HR specialists at InFusion Corporation maintain a talent pool of sales people who have demonstrated high potential for moving into the role of a sales director. The HR specialists assign goals for training and other development needs to this group of workers and track their progress during talent review meetings each year. When they learn that the incumbent of the Sales Director- Western Region is planning to retire in the next six months, they decide to set up a succession management plan for the incumbent. They add candidates to this plan using members of the talent pool for sales people that they have been managing. When adding the talent pool members to the succession plan, the HR Specialist can assess the readiness level of each worker and determine the workers who will be the most qualified candidates to replace the incumbent.

Talent Review

When you set up a talent review meeting, you can associate succession plans and talent pools with the meeting. During the meeting, the selected talent pools and succession plans appear on the meeting dashboard, and you can drag and drop workers from the grid to a talent pool or succession plan. You can also add workers to a succession plan or talent pool that is not associated with the meeting. However, the list of available plans or pools is restricted to ones for which the meeting facilitators are listed as the owner.

You can also create new talent pools and succession plans from the meeting dashboard. If you create a new succession plan or talent pool, you must exit the meeting dashboard and add the newly created pool or plan to the meeting for it to appear on the meeting dashboard.

FAQs for Define Succession Management

What happens if I remove a readiness level?

If you remove a readiness level that is in use for succession plan candidates or talent pool members, their readiness level is changed to No Readiness Available. Plan or pool owners can change the readiness level to one that is available.