If you’re planning on making internal shifts within your company, you may want to consider implementing a succession plan to ensure your organizational goals are met. In order to maintain a smooth business process, planning ahead for successors of a particular position is crucial.
That’s why Workday created Workday Succession Planning – a unified system that helps users plan and manage succession for critical positions in any company.
With this type of plan, you can find workers that match a job profile within your company and ensure they’re prepared to step into that position when the time comes.
Read on to learn more about Workday Succession Planning and how it can set your entire organization up for success!
What is Workday Succession Planning?
Workday Succession Planning is an intuitive, talent management tool created to help organizations build succession plans for a specific job role. Succession planning in Workday allows users to create succession talent pools to pull employees from, mine data to assess readiness for critical positions, nominate internal and external candidates for a position, and plan for development needs.
With Workday Succession Planning, companies can identify critical roles for succession, assess future needs for employee and role development, create succession pools and plans, and ensure the right people are assigned to the right roles across the organization.
Why is Succession Planning Important?
Succession planning helps companies act proactively and prepare their teams for change within the organization in the future. With a well-defined succession plan, your company can ensure the right employees are always in the right place, making it easier for employees to step into leadership roles or navigate new positions if internal change occurs.
Having a succession plan in place can promote employee engagement and improve employee retention, while helping your company meet organizational objectives and motivating employees to reach their personal goals.
How Does the Succession Planning Process Work?
Here are five steps to create an effective succession plan:
- Identify Critical Positions
When you begin creating your succession plan, you should first identify the job profiles that would be detrimental to workflow efficiency if they aren’t filled quickly.
Here are some factors to consider when you’re identifying these critical positions:
- Job positions that are relevant to goals and objectives
- Job positions that are exclusive to your organization
- Job positions that have extensive learning curves
- Job positions with a high influence on business workflows
2) Create a Potential Talent Pool
Now you need a talent pool to select from!
In this step, you will start to form a group of potential employees that have the skills and experience for a specific job role. During this phase, the candidates will undergo performance evaluations, engage in work simulations, participate in interviews, and gain feedback.
3) Finalize Talent Pool Selections
In this step, the succession pool is finalized. The selected talent will go through necessary approvals and tasks to ensure they are properly approved for the succession program.
4) Develop a Successor
At this point, the talent pool has been created, and the potential talent now needs the proper training to prepare for their future responsibilities in the new position.
5) Evaluation
It’s crucial to evaluate the new talent as they are training and developing new skills to make sure they stay on track. This also helps managers recognize underdeveloped areas of the plan and areas of improvement for future use.
Elements of a Succession Plan
In order to create an effective succession plan, it should be:
Strategic: These plans should always work in tandem with an organization’s operational strategy.
Formal: This needs to be a well-defined process that produces a positive outcome for an organization.
Extensive: Your plan should look over every level of your organization, not just higher-level job titles.
Benefits of Succession Planning
Using succession planning can provide businesses with talent information, allow them to assess critical roles, and plan for a better future.
Here’s a look at five specific benefits of Workday Succession Planning:
Reduces organizational costs:
Succession planning can help a company meet its human resources needs and fill positions from within their organization, rather than going outside the org to find new talent.
This saves an organization money, time, and energy that would be otherwise spent recruiting externally.
Provides growth opportunities for potential employees:
Succession planning allows the next potential successor to be curated and prepared for the job, its responsibilities, and any challenges that could arise in the new position.
Solidifies career path:
Succession planning allows HR teams to make career plans for employees and improve training processes. And, by comparing employee skills to the skills required for the position, succession planning makes it easier to find the right employee for the job.
Improves the image of your organization:
Increased job satisfaction, productivity, and performance are just some of the benefits that come along with succession planning. This will improve the overall image of your organization and attract an appropriate workforce to your company.
Decreases employee turnover:
Succession planning provides more job opportunities within a company, and these new roles can help employees feel prepared to take up a higher job role. This makes employees feel valued and empowered to invest in their own career development initiatives.
How We Can Help
Whether you want to manage your Workday talent, integrate Workday HCM with Workday Succession Planning, or are just getting started on your Workday journey, Surety Systems can help!
Our senior-level Workday consultants have the right skills and years of experience to help your team implement Workday Succession Planning and optimize the future of your business.
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Interested in learning more about Workday Succession Planning and its benefits for your organization?
