Question

Unit III Assignment --Succession Planning Procedure

In a minimum of 500 words, document a succession plan for an employee (e.g., IT Developer, Maintenance Crew, Training Specialist, CEO) of your chosen firm.

What concepts are crucial when recruiting team members?

Be sure to address the following questions in your response:

1. What are the critical knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) of that position?

2. Will you select, train, or both for these KSAs?

3. How will you ensure your selected successor does not leave the firm?

4. What succession planning process will you use?

Follow the steps above in chronological order. Any sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations in APA format.

Answer 1

Succession Planning is one of the integral and essential part of human resource planning.Succession planning basically involves identifying the required skills to perform a particular job and than developing the employee and making him capable of performing that job efficiently.

While recruiting a team member the concepts that are crucial are as follows:

• The person should be a team player,
• He should support team building at all times,
• Potential employee must have required education, knowledge, skills and experience,
• His personality must not contradict that of other team mates
• The potential candidate should be confident enough to perform the task.
• The potential candidate must be enthusiastic to perform the task.

Succession planning procedure includes five basic steps. These steps can be clearly understood with an example.

Succession plan for software developer:

Step 1: Identifying key areas and positions:

• If the position of software developer is vacant, in an IT company, it will be difficult to achieve business goals.
• The key areas performed by software developer will include Programming, Systems Analysis, Systems Evaluation, Operations Analysis, Technology Design etc.

Step 2: Identifying capabilities and competencies for key areas and positions:

• In order to develop selection criteria and determining the required efforts for employee development, capabilities, knowledge, skills and ability for performing the key areas of software developer are identified as follows:
  • Knowledge: Computers and Electronics, Engineering and Technology, Different Languages, Mathematics, Design, Telecommunication, and administration.
  • Skills: Programming, Systems Analysis, Systems Evaluation, Operations Analysis, Technology Design, Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking, Active Listening, reading,and writing; active learner, coordination, Troubleshooting, Time management, Operation Monitoring, negotiation.
  • Ability: Potential candidate must be able to perform in a team, he should be innovative, Cooperative, adaptive, Stress Tolerant, self controlled and organized, Proactive, Leader and should have concern for others.

Step 3: Identifying interested candidates and assess them based on the capabilities required for the targeted job:

• By discussing the carrier plan with interested employees,
• Identifying employees whose KSAs will match the required key area and software developer position.
• Ensuring sufficient potential candidates are in feeder groups.

Step 4: Develop and implement Succession and knowledge transfer plan:

• Incorporating strategies for training of employees so that they can prepare new role,
• The interested employee, selected for the position is trained by several online training aids.
• Linking employees training and learning activities to KSAs required for the software developer position.

Step 5: Evaluating Effectiveness:

• In order to evaluate that succession plan implemented for the position of software developer has worked or not.
• Is the position of software developer filled quickly.
• New software developer is performing effectively.
• In order to ensure that the selected successor does not leave the firm before offering him new position he should sigh a bond stating the time period he is bound to work for an employer.

The above mentioned example clearly explains several steps involved in succession planning. Different organizations have different procedures but the basic procedure of implementing succession planning in an organization is the same.

Reference:

• Bhattacharyya,D.K. 2006. Human Resource Planning, Second edition. Excel books, . pg. 246.

• Job description of software developer was gained from my majors.