Succession Planning
Also known as التخطيط للإحلال الوظيفي
Definition
Succession planning identifies the critical roles an organization cannot afford to leave vacant, assesses who could fill them and how ready each candidate is, and puts development in place to close the gap before the vacancy occurs. It covers senior leadership and any position where scarce expertise creates operational risk.
Succession planning is often limited to executives. Yet a single specialist engineer, regulatory officer or systems administrator whose knowledge is undocumented can represent more concrete operational risk than a vice-president role with several plausible internal candidates.
Candidates are commonly grouped as ready now, ready in one to two years, or ready in three or more, and each group needs different development. Organizations often base that judgment on performance reviews, manager assessments and track record. Those ratings are normally kept in the HR system, and a learning platform adds the record of development activities completed and passed. A readiness call that rests mainly on tenure, or on how visible someone is to senior management, is hard to defend.