Succession Planning

Succession planning or succession management can help you to identify successors for key employees.

You manage succession plans in the Succession Plans work area. Select My Client Groups > Succession Plans.

Because of the default filters, you can see only active succession plans that you have access to when you view the Succession Overview page. Clear the filter to also view inactive succession plans.

These are the advantages of using succession plans:

  • Ensure a smooth transition to key jobs and positions.

  • Identify workers who are ready now, or who can become ready by developing the necessary skills, for jobs and positions that are likely to become vacant.

  • Plan the career development of candidates.

Plan Types

Select from these succession plan types:

  • Incumbent: Use this plan type to replace a specific person.

  • Job: Use this plan type to identify candidates for a job, such as Business Analyst or Sales Manager.

  • Position: Use this plan type to identify candidates for a position, such as Senior Vice President for Sales or Assistant Marketing Manager.

Plan Incumbents

You can view the incumbents who currently have the same job or position as defined in Job and Position type succession plans. The succession plan attributes such as business unit and department if specified determine the incumbents who have the same position or job. You can see the incumbent information on these pages:

  • Succession Overview

  • Succession Planning tab of person spotlight

  • Incumbents section of the succession plan

Note:

You can see only the incumbents that you have access to.

Plan Candidates

Succession plans can have multiple owners from different organizations. So you can include candidates from multiple organizations in succession plans.

You can add candidates to a succession plan in these ways:

  • Search for employees that you can access and add them as candidates.

  • Add external candidates.

  • Use Best-Fit feature to find candidates who match the job or position requirements.

    Note:

    The Best-Fit feature isn't available on mobile devices. You also can't see this option when your administrator enables adding artificial intelligence suggested candidates.

  • Add artificial intelligence suggested candidates.
  • Add talent pool members.

You can see these details for each candidate in the Candidates section of a succession plan:

  • Date when they were added as a candidate to the plan

  • Readiness information

  • Status

You can also see the current job title for internal candidates.

You can view these counts for candidates who are also a candidate in other succession plans:

  • The total number of plans in which the person is a candidate

  • The number of plans that you can access in which the person is a candidate

Click the count link to view the corresponding list of other succession plans in which the person is a candidate.

By default, you can see only the count for the number of plans that you can access. You can't see the count that shows the total number of plans the person is a candidate on. Your administrator can however use Transaction Design Studio to show this count.

To find more information about an internal candidate, click the candidate name. The Succession Planning tab in person spotlight for that candidate opens where you can see these details:

  • The succession plans created for that person that you can access

  • The succession plans in which the person is a candidate that you can access

  • The talent pools in which the person is a member and which you can access

  • Risk of Loss, Impact of Loss, and Job Criticality details

You can create or edit external candidates in the External Candidates section of the Succession Overview page. When creating an external candidate, you need to specify the last name. The other fields such as first name, job title, email, and phone are optional.

You can search for existing candidates when editing a succession plan or creating a new one. Use the search field in the Candidates section to do this. You can search by the first name, last name, or both. Initially, you can see 5 candidates that match the name entered, but you can load more. You can sort the candidates listed.

Note:

You can select only these succession plans when you try to add candidates:

  • Plans for which you're a named owner
  • Plans in which you have access to the named or inferred incumbent of the plan

Talent Pools

You can add candidates in a succession plan to an existing talent pool to manage candidate development. The development goals in a talent pool can prepare candidates for the relevant job or position.