Home»For Companies»DRILL Career Management & Succession Planning

Career Management

Career Management forms an inseparable part of Talent Management and involves a complex of processes that enable an employer to identify talented employees (employees with high potential for professional growth and/or high work performance) ideally on all functional levels, while defining the options and conditions for career growth including conditions for providing appropriate educational and other development activities, so that employees may develop their professional growth and responsibilities.

Even if an employer defines and organizes processes within the scope of career planning, it is essential that career planning be clearly understood and defined as a mutual responsibility of the employer and the employee involved; it is an opportunity for an employee to develop his or her competencies and skills with the support of the employer, as well as to prepare for career growth.

Through effective career planning management an employer can increase the overall quality of its employee base and their work performance (their capacity to achieve or exceed the expected work results), which is a key competitive advantage. Career planning principles clearly defined and adhered to support the motivation of individual employees so that they can desire and achieve a higher level of work performance and thereby increase the overall performance of the organization. This is also one of the important assumptions for forming a performance-oriented company culture (a company culture which targets a high level of work performance).

The formal identification of employees with high potential for professional growth and/or with high work performance is typically conducted according to clear criteria within an evaluation of work performance. These criteria are as a rule qualitatively distinct from the individual functional level. If the individual employees fulfill these criteria, they are then provided with specifically developmental criteria, so that they can be prepared for the adoption of greater responsibilities within their defined career path. Provided that such employees are at the same time prepared as well for advancement to specific positions, the result is a connection of planned career path with planned advancement. It is natural that a group of employees with high potential for professional growth and/or with high work performance should become a primary source for the identification and selection of representatives for key managerial and specialist positions.

DRILL offers support during the creation or evaluation of processes for career management according to your requirements so that they are aligned with other human resource management processes in your organization.

Succession Planning

Succession Planning is another important process within the scope of Talent Management, through which an organization deliberately plans and secures the filling of managerial positions and the positions of key specialists with its talented employees (employees with high potential for professional growth). If the advancement process is effectively managed, it can then have critical significance for the problem-free continuity of successful organization management in case of loss of important managers or specialists for any reason.

Planned advancement is considered one of the most critical and most important parts of general planning or Business Continuity Planning, which to a large extent depends on the accessibility and possibilities for the use of high quality and competent managers. Planned advancement of employees enables an organization to have available motivated and loyal representatives for key positions equipped with required competencies and skill sets who in great detail know its organizational model, processes and internal organization.

In the event that such planning does not exist, this will necessarily result in solely improvised temporary or permanent solutions and/or often in the abandonment of certain areas without sufficient management. If a capable successor is not then found, there exists a high probability that such a solution will negatively influence company results.

Planned advancement necessarily requires that top managers regularly monitor and evaluate their managers and specialists, and deliberately search out and designate several successors for each significant managerial position or key specialist position. This process also mostly involves evaluation of certain assumptions conditioning the full preparation of a successor for the assumption of a designated position, including for example the development of certain competencies and skill sets, time plans for preparation and so forth, which should be reflected in the plan of individual development or in any other action plan. A succession plan should then clearly establish which factors should be taken into consideration and what the process is for prior designation of successors into the position, for which he or she has been prepared.

If you are interested in applying or further developing the succession planning process, DRILL can help in the creation and organization of such processes and with their connection to other processes in the area of human resource management.