Succession Planning in the 21st Century - Essay Example

Succession Planning in the 21st Century Name & ID Course Name & Code Instructor’s Name 24th March 2010 The requirements of an organisation are continuously changing due to new technologies, consumer requirements, and competition. This has resulted in organisations formulating and implementing strategies and frameworks that ensures they are strategic and have competitive advantage. One of the strategies that is used by human resource management is succession planning. The dynamics of the environment has made understanding succession planning to be considered important; negating past perceptions and misconceptions e.g. provided the employees are effective. Thus, the aim of this paper is to discuss how succession planning has changed in the 21st century. Succession planning can be defined as a process in which an organisation ensures that employers recruit and develop employees to fill positions, retain, and play major roles within these organisations (Suchy, 2004). This means that through succession planning process, the employer has to recruit superior employees, helps in developing skills, knowledge and abilities, and lay down a framework that prepares the employees for promotion or advancement into ever more challenging roles (Barnett & Davis, 2008). Moreover, the succession planning requires that superior employees be retained due to the fact that the employees appreciate the attention, development and time that the employers/organisation has offered. It is prudent to identify and understand the long term aims of the organisation so that the entire planning process includes hiring of superior staff. Development and improving of employee competences requires heavy investment in terms of capital and human resource, which means that once the process is done, it should be long term, and hence the goals of an organisation should be fully formulated and understood in advance. These fundamentals are among the core responsibilities and roles that human resource managers play in the 21st century. The HRM utilises different strategies to identify and understand the developmental needs of their employees (Jarrell & Pewitt, 2007). This means that all important employees should understand their career paths and clearly define the roles that are being developed to ensure they are developed. However, it is paramount to champion employee retention in that it is important to know employment trends in the industry that the organisation is within since sometimes it is difficult to fill some positions externally (Boyer & Verma, 2009). These are some of the needs that are fulfilled by the 21st century succession planning, and thus differ from the traditional and predominant means that are in the business environs. For a long time, many organisations have based their succession planning process on traditional methods, and the aim of such method is to find the most competent and best employee to fill jobs. These traditional requirements have changed since the 21st century requires introduction of new competencies that are required by superior staff and changing business requirements (Jarrell & Pewitt, 2007). Some of these additions include Internet sourcing techniques, complex information technology systems, corporate economics, database management, optimisation, comprehensive effectiveness, and efficiency metrics. These additional are required by organisations because of skill imbalances, rapid change, and increase in worker mobility, decreasing worker loyalty, multiple outsourcing options and new environmental requirements or arrangements (Barnett & Davis, 2008). Thus, the 21st century succession planning and staffing model brings into consideration three important features, which are technological sophistication, thorough grounding in business and utilisation of performance measurements and metrics. These characteristics have ensured that succession planning process incorporates numerous fundamentals (Fink & Brayman, 2006). Moreover, these three factors impacts differently on human resource management, and other organisational requirements. The traditional staffing methods had been developed before realisation of importance of human capital management and before introduction of business school topics and even before understanding corporate performance. Traditional methods were based on features such as budget requirements are met, seats filled and adequate choice of candidates, and this managerial level did not pay much attention to other human resource requirements. This means that the use of extensive metrics was not required meaning that they were not kept; this view still exists where most organisations keep only rudimentary data on effectiveness and efficiency (Jarrell & Pewitt, 2007). However, in the 21st century, more data is required since it drives these organisations. Numerous metrics are used in collection of data that include cost per hire, time to source, time to fill/start, quality of hire, recruit funnel ratio, turnover and retention, workforce planning, and marketing efficiency (Fink & Brayman, 2006). These numerous metrics illustrates managerial response to competitive and volatile business climate in which it raises the level for corporate success. Thus, best-in-class performances requires all investments and expenses should be linked to bottom-line results, champion outsourcing, improve on efficiency, and all process should be measured (Arnold, 1997). Measuring also should clearly be defined. It is important to measure what matters and not measuring anything worth measuring. Mandate requirements needs change in measurement strategy and it needs expansion in type of information been collected and analysed. For example, a manager may say that in the next four years the growth of the organisation should be targeted at 20%, current revenue base of $10 billion and produced by 21 countries employing 45,000 staff (Arnold, 1997). In this instance, the person who is required to aid in achieving this requirement needs different methods, and means to ensure information is collected. Some of the information that is required to achieve this goal includes organisational charts, development plans, workforce projections, brand analysis, sourcing analysis, job competency analysis, staffing efficiency metrics, and structural analysis (Barnett & Davis, 2008). Collecting this information determines planning and employee roles in the organisation. All this factors and functions can only be accomplished by the introduction of the 21st century succession planning, and those organisations that employ these strategies improve on productivity and profitability. Technology has also played a major role in determining 21st century staffing requirements. The requirement of this century is huge, which means that the technology utilised should be efficient (Fink & Brayman, 2006). Traditional systems or older systems cannot integrate and handle effectively numerous organisations tasks such as internal mobility and career portals, dynamic scheduling, interviews, assessments, applicant tracking, job posting, workforce planning, competency and learning management, predictive analytics, and succession planning performance (Jarrell & Pewitt, 2007). However, these numerous requirements are easily fulfilled by those organisations that keep themselves update on market developments and changes. Recruiters used to fulfilling the requirements of succession planning, but introduction of software and hardware determines and has changed these results. In the 21st century, the succession planning is based on technological driven and data centred world that focuses on the same decision making analytics that are common on R&D, sales, finance or even manufacturing (Fink & Brayman, 2006). This means that the performance bar is higher, and it requires introduction of important performance strategies (Barnett & Davis, 2008). The use of technology has ensured that in case of succession planning, less time is utilised, costs are lowering, employees can be kept longer, and they can be deployed easily and hence better productivity. Generally, the requirements of the society and business world are changing at a faster rate, which means that new strategies should be developed those balance these requirements. Succession planning process in the 21st century is becoming tougher because of corporate requirements, and changing in business environments. Hence, it has required the introduction of new methods and means to ensure employee turnover is decreased, employing productive staff, and ensuring that the most appropriate assistance is provided to them. It has resulted in the introduction of metrics measuring, utilisation of technology, and thorough grounding in business. References Arnold, J., 1997. Managing careers into the 21st century. New York: SAGE Barnett, R. & Davis, S., 2008. Creating greater success in succession planning. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 10, pp. 721-739. Boyer, K. & Verma, R., 2009. Operations and supply chain management for the 21st Century. London: Cengage Learning. Fink, D. & Brayman, C., 2006. School leadership succession and the challenges of change. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42, pp. 62-89. Jarrell, K. & Pewitt, K., 2007. Succession planning in government: case study of a medium sized city. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 27, pp. 297-309. Suchy, S., 2004. Leading with passion: change management in the 21st-century museum. London: Rowman Altamira. Read More