Talent Management

Reducing recruiting costs by identifying and preparing existing employees for future leadership roles?
Predicting future leadership needs and making plans to meet them?
Which criteria to use when promoting employees from within?

Succession planning is a process to create and manage the organization’s talent pipeline. Succession planning often includes:

Identifying the key positions in an organization and the competencies and experience criteria they require.
Cultivating a pipeline of high-potential talent from which to select new leadership.
Understanding the competencies and skills currently available within the organization.

Facilitation. I/O psychologists can facilitate meetings with senior leaders to understand key talent needs and anticipate future organizational challenges.
Design & Training. I/O psychologists can design succession planning systems that support organizational goals and educate stakeholders on the process.
Consensus Building. I/O psychologists can calibrate the management team on the most critical future leadership needs and identify candidates best positioned to meet those needs.
Assessment. I/O psychologists can assess employees’ competencies to identify those with the aptitude or potential as well as the specific knowledge, skills, and abilities to fill key positions within the organization.
Development. I/O psychologists can create a development process to prepare individuals for future leadership roles.
Selection. I/O psychologists can assist the management team with the final determination of the best candidates for a leadership position.
Onboarding and Transitioning. Through action planning and coaching, I/O psychologists can support selected candidates during their transition to the next role.

The following is an example of an organization facing succession planning challenges:

A large transportation corporation faced an aging workforce and a retiring chief executive officer.
The organization expected the retirement of roughly 5% of the workforce, or 600–800 people per year for the next five years.
Executives were unsure how to identify high-potential employees and develop them for leadership roles.

I/O psychologists helped this organization by:

Facilitating a review of the organization’s business objectives and identifying mission-critical knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Building competency models to outline individual building blocks for success and aid in selection.
Assessing internal and external CEO candidates to replace the retiring CEO and offering insight on which candidate could best fill the role.
Assessing 48 high-potential leaders to fill the anticipated vacancies of the retiring workforce.
Creating a process to develop leaders by moving them within the organization for increased opportunities and cross-functional expertise
Establishing an assessment process to identify employees who would make excellent first-level leaders.

This organization benefited by realizing the following results*:

Retention efforts aimed at redirecting skilled workers from their intended retirement yielded a 30 improvement.
Potential successors for all key leadership positions were identified, and development plans to prepare these individuals were created.
Profitability increased through greater efficiency (e.g., shortened ramp-up time) and higher-performing leaders.

*The results here are an example of potential outcomes based on the approach selected to address the situation