TM - March 2008 - (Page 47)

While many organizations have high-potential programs, they often don’t delve deeper to find out what the individuals themselves are interested in pursuing, Garonzik said. This depth can be particularly helpful when considering multigenerational workforce preferences. “What we’re really pushing companies to consider is, ‘High potential for what, exactly?’” he said. A consistent succession plan helps employees understand where they fit in the organization, as well as where they might want to grow. It also helps foster a culture of understanding that might assuage the effects of external hiring, Ringler said. “If the culture is one of full disclosure, which many cultures are not, people know who the higher [potentials] are, so it helps people to know how the organization goes about doing its decision making,” Ringler said. “And that helps the hi-pos know, or anybody know, ‘How can I be part of the succession planning process?’” This sense of employee empowerment has become a crucial advantage in today’s market. Organizations that offer workers the opportunity to track their own progress will recruit the best talent, Martin said. “It’s no longer a nice to have. It really becomes a need to have,” he said. “It becomes this holistic recruiting, developing, retention type of strategy.” It’s also at this learning and development stage of succession planning that applying technology can vastly improve results. “The automation brings consistency, it brings facilitation, it brings the ability to leverage that data into another system,” Martin said. “[It] provides so much greater insight; it provides greater access organizationally to talent.” Dynamic Learning and Development with something a lot more proactive because it’s actually applied.” Reingruber pointed to the Air Force as an example. Before engineers begin the design process for airplanes, he said they are prompted to read through closeout packages or after-action reports on similar projects. When they complete their projects, they are encouraged to make submissions into the knowledge database. “You’ve kind of got to embed this idea of capturing these knowledge nuggets throughout their lifetime as an employee, so when they do leave, it exists somewhere, it’s used proactively and the other folks — regardless of skill set or time within the organization — can access it,” Reingruber said. The use of technology at this point also is incredibly useful, Reingruber said. A lot of companies are experimenting with intelligent agents or digital repository systems. The program pulls up appropriate stored knowledge and processes for an employee who has just entered a new phase of a project. The employee then has the opportunity to review and apply the relevant information. “Now, for the first time, we’ve actually got a requirement that’s driving everybody to look at [intelligent agents], and we’ve got the technology to support it,” Reingruber said. Looking Ahead Ultimately, the benefits of a consistent, enterprisewide succession plan are vast and varied. Namely, organizations can adapt to the potential talent crisis by doing more with fewer resources. “It’s allowing the folks that are there to work more efficiently,” Reingruber said. “As these folks retire, you may find out you can do just as well by having the information available with fewer resources.” Additionally, a company’s ability to plan succession can have major effects on marketplace perception, as well as on the bottom line, Ringler said. “From a customer service perspective, if the organization doesn’t have that kind of solid planning in place, the potential loss to business is very large,” she said. “Creating strategic partnerships has a lot to do with succession planning, [as does] creating good customer relationships, building your business base. All of those external profit benefits are in many ways based upon the organization’s ability to run itself internally.” In the case of the Northeast Georgia Health System, which is set to open several additional centers as well as a whole new hospital in 2008, establishing an enterprise-wide succession planning strategy was a no-brainer. “The need is recognized,” Fulbright said. “This is going to be a significant cost-saving strategy in the long run.” With such a deep-reaching organizational impact, the succession planning process might start as an human resources function, but ultimately would be taken over by department heads as it became fully integrated into the business strategy, said Mike Reingruber, group vice president at Plexus Scientific, a technology consulting company. Additionally, other aspects of succession planning, such as knowledge capture and information sharing, would become dynamic, applied processes rather than one-time deals. “[When an employee retires], you’ve got a very limited time period to extract what you can know from that person,” Reingruber said. “[And] it’s tough for someone who’s now in your footsteps and doing your job to say, ‘Let me check the lessons-learned repository and see what’s there.’ You don’t self-prompt to go and look. A lot of the agencies are looking to replace antiquated systems talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com 47 March 2008 http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - March 2008

TM - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance - The Paradoxically Gifted Leading Edge - Reverse Engineering: Shifting Focus to HR's Cause Learning Connection - Sharing Talent On the Hunt for Talent Unlock Employee Motivation Through Personality Testing HR Crucial to Executive Compensation Process Downtown Management: Surfing May Not Be Slacking Think Tanks Aid Government in Talent Management Creating Consistency: Enterprise-Wide Succession Plans Battle Retention Deficits With On-Boarding Sunbelt Rentals: A Mid-Level View of HR From the Trenches Butterball: No Chicken When It Comes to Talent Management Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential - Choosing Change

TM - March 2008

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