News from the Oertel Group

Succession Planning - Not Just for Executives

For most nonprofit organizations, their largest financial expense is employees' salaries. Not only do employees represent a large financial investment, they are the means through which most organizations' missions are accomplished. Employees therefore are the most critical assist of the organization and essential to the implementation of its strategic goals.

In recent years, there has been attention paid to succession planning for Executive Directors - caused in part because of the impending mass retirement of the baby boomer generation (although some of those retirements may be delayed because of the current economic downturn). While important for Boards of Directors to focus on the Executive Director position, organizations that solely focus succession planning at this level are being shortsighted.

When focused beyond the top management positions, succession planning has previously focused on replacement training or having back-ups for specific positions. New approaches focus on development of the skills of employees in order for there to be internal promotion. Under this approach, organizations invest in talent pools.

Employees interested in promotion can be nominated for participation in the talent pool by supervisors, peers or self-nominations - depending on how the organizations wants to structure the process. Any employee participating in a talent pool is expected to continue to perform their current job at a high level. The organization commits to providing access to training and skill development opportunities but no promises of promotion are made. Then when a vacancy occurs, the organization has a pool of qualified internal candidates to choose from.

At the core of this approach is understanding the "competencies" for each position - the knowledge, skills, attitudes and other abilities required for exemplary performance. The organization can also develop career paths - a process that articulates from which starting positions is it possible for employees to be promoted into specific positions (e.g. an administrative assistant is likely to be promoted into being an office manager or executive assistant).

Next it is important for each employee interested in promotion to be clear on their existing skills and abilities. This is usually achieved through a multi-rater performance reviews and/or assessment tests.

Then for each employee in the pool and individual development plan is developed. Because adults learn in different ways, the specifics of the plan will vary. It may include books, seminars, on-line courses, cross-departmental assignments and action learning projects.

For the process to be fully effective on an organizational basis, there needs to be management oversight and ongoing evaluation of outcomes. This approach is described in an article by William J. Rothwell, Ph.D., "Ten Key Step to Effective Succession Planning."

The Oertel Group can assist your organization with implementing succession planning as well as related organizational development and human resources functions including designing human resources information systems, job description, performance evaluation, and supervision structures.

If you are interested in learning more about our services, please contact us at 323-257-1125 or via email.