Workforce Succession Planning

Succession planning focuses on identifying and growing talent to fill leadership and business-critical positions in the future. In the face of skills shortages, succession planning has gained popularity, and is now carried out in both large and smaller organisations.

This factsheet looks at approaches to succession planning as well as the type of organisations who use it, and how it’s changed. It explores the relationship between succession planning and talent management programmes, investigating the balance needed when recruiting ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and the process of nurturing internal talent. It also looks at the ways of identifying successors, activities used in succession planning, and the role of people professionals in the process.