What is Succession Planning?

Succession Planning is a process where the University seeks to understand its future capability needs, identify potential talent gaps and seek to remedy those gaps through the development and progression of staff. Succession Planning is a process that is carried out by University and compliments the Career Planning conducted by staff for their own career progressment.  

The reasons you might undertake Succession Planning

1. Future Leadership - To develop future leaders for your area and the University.
2. Critical Capability - To build capacity in your team so you have support for your critical roles, this will provide you with flexibility when staff take leave or if staff take other roles.
3. Future Capability – If you know your area will be responsible for new activities you may need to build new capabilities within your team. Succession planning allows you to identify gaps and develop team members with the capability to address these gaps.

How do I undertake Succession Planning?

• Step 1. Understand current and future needs. A good place to start is to understand the future needs of the University and your Faculty or Business Unit. This information can be sourced from the University Strategic Plan and any relevant Capability Plans.
• Step 2. Understand current capability. – Undertake an assessment of the current capability of staff within your team.
• Step 3. Determine capability gaps & excesses – Compare the current and future capability needs against the current capability of the team to determine gaps. Assign these gaps to people/roles.
• Step 4. Address capability gaps – To address capability needs the most common strategies are to:
• • Hire – You may choose to fill your capability gap through the hiring of new staff. This is a good solution when you have the budget and your capability gap is critical (time & need) or the skills may be difficult to internally develop.
  • Outsource – Can this capability gap be met by a new system or process or another department or external provider? If so then you may seek to address the gap through an outsourcing strategy.
  • Develop – If you have planned well in advance you will be able to address your capability gaps through the development of your existing staff.

Tools and processes to assist you in Succession Planning 

1. Understand current and future needs – UC Strategic Plan, UC Capability Plans, SWOT analysis
2. Understand current capability – SWOT analysis

 

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