Succession planning is an integral part of the talent management cycle, and is the process of identifying and developing potential future leaders or senior managers, as well as individuals who could fill other business-critical positions, either in the short or the long term. The aim is for organisations and systems to be willing and able to fill key roles effectively if the current post holder were to leave, whilst ensuring that the diversity, quantity and quality of leaders needed are identified, developed and supported to contribute.
Board succession planning – guidance
This guidance provides an introduction and overview to the succession planning process in relation to Board level roles, including key components and best practice. It contains several links and templates to help implement and facilitate the succession planning process, which may be tailored to suit individual organisational or system needs. Whilst this guidance is focused toward Board level roles, many of the guiding principles and practices apply to different succession planning approaches for other critical roles at different levels of the organisation, for leadership development and technical competencies.
Succession planning – Template
This template is to facilitate capturing the key succession planning data and can be completed once all relevant scope for growth – career conversations have taken place. It provides a critical role assessment matrix tool and a table to record details of every individual and their key succession and diversity data in one place. In addition to this there is a succession heat map and diversity tools to provide key oversights on the strength and breadth of your organisation or systems succession plan.