Succession Management

Companies the world over need more and more executive personnel to provide suitable successors for their outgoing managers. In times of dwindling working age populations and socio-economic trends causing a dip in the number of graduates, this has become a major challenge for many companies.

With strategic succession management as an integrated part of their corporate strategy, companies can manage to systematically minimize these risks. A close link with the talent management process can serve as an additional, valuable factor for success in the competition for talent. A succession management process that is properly integrated in the wider HR landscape can consist of

• A regular cycle for starting the process,
• The intensive management of relevant data,
• Succession management conferences and 
• A matching process for critical functions and potential successors.

HR instruments and systems, such as the analysis of potential, can be used to process the data companies need to identify key positions in their business models and the current occupants of these positions. In management conferences, these critical positions and suitable successors are reviewed and cleared in an integrated, typically IT-based matching procedure, before the resulting vacancies and appointment options are assessed.

An on-going succession management process can minimize the risks inherent in handing over business responsibilities. To achieve this, it needs to include relevant efforts for maintaining the qualification of identified talents and set up a virtual “market place” to compare their professional and personal competences with the strategic requirements of their target positions. Companies who achieve this are prepared for the future, effectively maintain their know-how, and will remain an innovative force in their markets for the long term.