Succession Mangement In Real Life

[jdrogheo]

In a 2008 Aberdeen Group report on Succession Management: Addressing the Leadership Development Challenge, organizations were asked about their internal challenges driving session management. Fifty-nine percent of best-in-class organizations cited “Insufficient internal management bench strength to meet our business goals” as one top challenge. However, more of the Best-in-class organizations (63%) are more concerned about the “replacement cost of key employees from outside the organization”.

We know that there is a leadership gap in the workforce and our organization, however we have talent strengths sitting in front of us all the time. But we are not spending the time developing them.

In a recent Employee Engagement study HRPartner Consulting completed for a client, 18% of the workforce is receiving frequent and meaningful feedback regarding the impact they have on the company’s performance. In addition, 47% of this group strongly believes they are getting a lot of attention regarding their personal development. We were also able to assess that one- third of the organization is highly engaged. For our organization's to have an effective succession plan we must concentrate on developing our employees. All of them.

In this same survey, employees with 2-3 and 4-5 years experience were the least engaged, therefore leaving the company at risk of losing valuable talent because 33% of the 2-3 and 4-5 year employees indicated they were not receiving feedback and coaching regarding the impact they have on the organization. Furthermore, 45% of the 2-3 year employees are not having professional development conversations with their mangers or supervisors.

You may be saying to yourself, “I don’t have time to develop my employees” or “that is why we send them to training”. You may not have time because you are putting out fires, answering questions from employees, doing parts of your employees’ jobs, and/or solving customer problems. Why do these fires and problems come up? Because we did not develop our employees!

The next time a fire comes up, a question gets asked, or a customer asks a question, ask yourself why these occurred then investigate the origin of these issues. Not as a witch-hunt, but to develop (educate and allow practice) the individual or individuals on these concerns. Then, follow up for review. Succession management is all of our responsibility and it begins with development of our employees at the very basic level up to the highest levels of your company.

Jon Drogheo is the Principal for HRPartner Consulting and is a Certified Human Resources Professional with a Masters Degree of Education and Human Resource Studies in Organizational Performance and Change from Colorado State University. Jon has an extensive Human Resources background with organizations such as Pitney Bowes, TIAA-CREF, New Global Telecom, and Nextel Communications.

Jon has appeared for speaking engagements for the National Society of Hispanic MBAs—Denver Chapter, Jobing.com, Society of Hispanic HR Professionals, Montana Credit Union Network Conference, Westwood College, DeVry University, Doane College and Lee Hecht Harrison–Active HR Group and the Credit Union Association of Colorado’s Annual Conference to name a few.
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