7 Awful Succession Policies that You Need to Kick Out Now!
by Lois Melbourne
Well how do you like that? The British Commonwealth countries have now decided it is okay to break tradition and make new laws that allow succession plans to transfer females, even if they have a little brother. More detail here . Yes, royalty have a different world to live by, but I have heard some pretty lame excuses for corporations to keep old outdated methods and traditions when it comes to their employee processes. And they are not all just related to succession planning. I thought I would create a list of the some of the really stupid decisions or policies that we see. If you don’t want your co-workers, peers or executives to roll their eyes and scoff at your ancient processes, get rid of these 7 succession policies NOW!
Awful Policy 1: Only Allowing Planners to Select Successors from the chain of command under a position
Successors should be the best candidates for the role regardless of the current department or position they hold in a company.
Awful Policy 2: Heralding super-flat organizations as a nirvana of efficiency.
Communication, goal setting, career paths and many other issues are often crippled by the huge gap between levels in a flat organization.
Awful Policy 3: Allowing performance review scores to be weighted as high as 80% of criteria for placement as successor
Unless your performance management rates and process are perfect AND geared specifically for succession planning, you are setting yourself up for complete failure.
Awful Policy 4: Only doing succession planning for the top three layers of an organization.
There are key positions throughout organizations that need succession plans or replacement plans far more than many in the upper ranks of the organization.
Awful Policy 5: Producing future workforce strategies without reviewing the data of historic workforce trends and external market conditions.
History will repeat itself. It’s a famous adage and it applies to the lessons you need to learn in your own employee base as well. What can history prepare you for now?
Awful Policy 6: Avoiding line managers and business unit leaders when it comes to making employee policies, because they “don’t understand HR”
Help them understand their workforce and make sure you distribute the input gathering to include the management in the fields from succession planning, to compensation decisions, to team structures and many other topics. If they don’t understand the impact of their decisions on the big picture of the workforce, then shame on you, not them. It is your job to engage them with tools and conversations.
Awful Policy 7: Accepting that hard to use software is better because it is more complex and will do more for you. Or, cheaper software is merely simpler or give you a faster, yet lesser return.
You need to select software that fits your organization’s needs and the way your people think and process their requirements.
Oh boy, I could keep going but then this wouldn’t be a blog post, it would be a manifesto or something too scary to read. If you are harboring out dated, closed minded or dusty traditions shake them off and kick them out of your company. You know there are some ugly ones out there. I didn’t even go to the illegal, discriminatory or evil things, that should be a given. Improve your kingdom (or queendom if we have to be politically correct and in the spirit of the new Commonwealth perspective.
Well how do you like that? The British Commonwealth countries are now decided it is ok to break tradition and make new laws that allow succession plans to transfer females, even if they have a little brother. More detail here http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/10/succession-laws-to-give-equal-rights-to-royal-women/ . Yes royalty have a different world to live by, but I have heard some pretty lame excuses for corporations to keep old outdated methods and traditions when it comes to their employee processes. And they are not all just related to succession planning. I thought I would create a list of the some of the really stupid decisions or policies that we see. If you don’t want your co-workers, peers or executives to roll their eyes and scawf at your ancient processes, get rid of these concepts soon.
1. Only allowing planners to select successors from the chain of command under the position in question.
a. Successors should be the best candidates for the role regardless of the current department or position they hold in the company.
2. Heralding super flat organizations as nirvanas of efficiencies.
a. Communication, goal setting, career paths and many other issues are often crippled by the huge gap between levels in a flat organization.
3. Allowing performance review scores to be weighted as high as 80% of criteria for placement as successor.
a. Unless your performance management rates and process are perfect AND geared specifically for succession planning, you are setting yourself up for complete failure.
4. Only doing succession planning for the top 3 layers of an organization.
a. There are key positions throughout organizations that need succession plans or replacement plans far more than many in the upper ranks of the organization.
5. Producing future workforce strategies without reviewing the data of historic workforce trends and external market conditions
a. History will repeat itself. It’s a famous quote and it applies to the lessons you need to learn in your own employee base as well. What can history prepare you for now.
6. Avoiding line managers and business unit leaders when it comes to making employee policies (because they don’t understand HR)
a. Help them understand their workforce and make sure you distribute the input gathering to include the management in the fields from succession planning, to compensation decisions to team structures and many other topics. If they don’t understand the impact of their decisions on the big picture of the workforce, then shame on you, not them. It is your job to engage them with tools and with conversations.
7. Accepting that expensive hard to use software is better because it is more complex, thus will do more for you or that cheaper software is going to be simpler or give you a return quicker.
a. You need to select software that fits your organization’s needs and the way your people think and process their requirements.
Oh boy, I could keep going but then this wouldn’t be a blog post, it would be a manifesto or something too scary to read. If you are harboring out dated, closed minded or dusty traditions shake them off and kick them out of your company. You know there are some ugly ones out there. I didn’t even go to the illegal, discriminatory or evil things, that should be a given. Improve your kingdom (or queendom if we have to be politically correct and in the spirit of the new Commonwealth perspective.
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