Human resource forecasting and planning is one of the areas with one of the highest significance and one of the least dealt areas in the domain of human resources. Succession planning being the second in this hierarchy. It is becoming very compelling to strategically manage the diverse set of talent in an organization. And so planning for the present and planning for the future of talent becomes essential and significant.
Our future talent is the youthful generation who are currently exploring the nuances of the dynamism of the business world. The future working generation is full of performing potential and winning mindset. They will not settle for anything less than their performance potential and they wish to raise the bar higher with each opportunity to learn. The future generation is as good as the digital generation of the modern times.They are tech-savvy and are more comfortable with the digitized way of working. The future supply of talent are in a way digitized professionals.
This poses a challenge as well as an opportunity to the Human Resources department. Challenge in terms of transforming from the traditional Human Resources setup to more of a contemporary one which is quite challenging given the fact that we are talking about transforming the most “peoplized” department of an organization. And opportunity in terms of serving the internal customers at their rightful best.
The future talent in supply would be no less than ambitious when it comes to multi- tasking and performing. They believe in risk – taking and flexibility which is hardly present in the conventional norms of a typical job. And so my recommendation is that the companies must encourage talent to proactively identify their developmental requirements and coach them for the same with a strategic approach. Simultaneously organizations should also design skill upgradation and talent enhancement programs for talent. Learning and Development enables talent sustainability, both on the job and off the job too. Mentoring and coaching talent must be essentially practiced to groom the talent for a “Ready for anything” attitude. This ensures structured succession planning and management. I believe companies should create leaders and intrapreneurs who ensures contemporariness in the strong value based system.
The future generation is impatient in a noble way and this helps the organization to stay competitive at every step of the business cycle. The next gen is all about wanting to multi – tasking and result oriented. Strategic incompetence is something that the winning mindset does not adhere to. They need to stay in an informed state all the time. All these characteristics enables the next gen to be rightfully called as the winning talent.
Business will be at a better position with the presence and performance of this kind of an unconventional and unorthodox talent. This will enable and improve the overall organizational effectiveness.
Only a learning organization can accommodate the fanatics of the future digitized generation. The unconventional-ness of the winning mindset of talent urges the organizations to develop and transform into the performance culture.
Succession planning or rather strategic succession planning is where organizations plan for the successors of their key talent and key positions. Succession planning is a strategic plan of the organization for accomplishing its vision and mission with the help and support of its present and future talent. An accurate succession plan is inclusive of all the business contingencies as well as manpower contingencies. Thus, a succession plan should be entirely congruent with that of the business plan.
Organizations must plan their winning talent pipeline by keeping the three prime factors in careful attention, viz. the vision & mission of the organization, the current set of key talent and key positions and lastly the future demand and supply of key talent.
The vision and mission of an organization is the heart and soul of any business. Generally the vision and mission statement of an organization comprise of the long term business purpose and objectives and short term goals, strategies and plans respectively. The alignment of all the action in the present to the outcome of the future is dictated by the vision and mission statements of the company. Any derailing from the vision and mission of the company results in wasteful resources. An apt succession plan shall incorporate the long term purpose of the company meanwhile also catering to the short term dynamism.
The current prevalent talent is a blend of workforce diversity and poses onerous challenges to manage them given the organizational challenges. This is one of the prime reasons of an extensive attrition fallout. It has become challenging to manage the talent and thereby the attrition rate. This makes it inevitable to plan an alternative blueprint for the existent set of talent in the organization. This is where succession planning comes into the picture and makes its significance felt.
Human resource planning is based on the concept manpower demand and supply. Since we are in the era of constant upgradation and dynamism, we have to implement the concept of strategic human resource planning. Under the scope of strategic human resource planning, we can plan the demand or need of the talent as per the company’s futuristic projects and withholdings. Similarly the organization’s futuristic needs or demands will have to be compared with the talent supply forecast and decisions have to be taken accordingly.
Taking care of these prime factors while chalking out a succession plan for an organization enables proper talent management across diversities of workforce. This can help an organization to mitigate the abhorrent levels of uncertainties.
