Succession Planning in Trakstar – The ‘Why’ and The ‘How’

If done right, succession planning is a great way to prepare your workforce and your organization for success in the future. Succession planning is the practice of identifying high-potential employees who will do well in leadership roles and will benefit from additional responsibilities and training. The Succession Planning feature in Trakstar works to confidentially compare your employees’ actual skills to their potential within the organization based on three key competencies:

• Ability
• Aspiration
• Engagement

Research by a talent management firm and subsequent report shows that the above competencies are essential to great leadership within an organization, and it makes perfect sense if you think about it!

Ability

Potential leaders need to have leadership ability. Using the Trakstar Succession Planning tool, managers can assess their employees’ leadership ability based on their history within the organization.  Do they show composure during difficult times? Are they early adopters of changing processes and technology? Are they trusted and natural leaders within the team?

Aspiration

This one is incredibly important.  Many people may be able to lead, but do they WANT to? If the employee shows initiative, asks for additional responsibilities, or has flat-out told you they would like to move up, you know they aspire to be in leadership roles. For some people it may be less obvious, so it is always a great idea to have candid conversations with employees to find out where they see themselves going in their career.

Engagement

Engagement is a buzzword in the HR realm and has been for a few years now.  Many studies show staggeringly low levels of engagement across the workforce, but it’s an essential trait that leadership needs to have within an organization. To assess whether an employee is engaged, think about whether they are eager to learn more, pitch in, and try new things within the organization. Also consider their past experiences while employed. Have they had a negative experience that was not resolved, perhaps contributing to disengagement, and can it be rectified? Or are their experiences mostly positive, and they seem to fit well into their role and the culture?

The above descriptions are by no means a comprehensive overview of what it means to have “ability,” “aspiration,” and “engagement” – they are just jumping off points to help better understand the logic behind the Trakstar Succession Planning method. Succession Planning is a flexible tool and can be configured to fit the organization, however keep in mind that Trakstar’s program is designed to help identify high potential employees—not to provide those employees with all the leadership skills they need.  Once you’ve identified your high potentials using Trakstar, creating a development program to tailor their skills to the leadership role they aspire to is the next step.  These programs will be very job-specific in nature—there is no one-size fits all to develop great leaders!