TM - October 2007 - (Page 47) career goals and expectations of the individuals working for them. Managers are finding employees are interested in opportunities that might exist outside their traditional career path — working in a different department or making a lateral move to explore a new area might be more attractive than an upward promotion in their current position and department. Understanding employees’ objectives and working to accommodate their goals can increase employee satisfaction and productivity, as well as retention, thus benefiting the organization and its employees. The Marriage of Career Planning and Succession Management other career opportunities within the organization. They can graphically navigate through various career-progression scenarios and quickly identify requirements for new positions. From the organizational perspective, management can communicate advancement opportunities to the workforce and provide employees with a clear understanding of the requirements for career progression or transition. Succession plans that are tied to employee career plans improve morale and productivity. Organizations are more likely to have employees who actively participate in their career development if they encourage employees to explore new opportunities within the organization and provide flexibility for employees who seek job mobility. By taking an active role in promoting their employees’ growth and advancement, companies are demonstrating they are interested and vested in their career paths. As such, employees are more likely to seek opportunities within the organization, thus improving employee satisfaction while reducing the knowledge drain and decreasing the loss of critical knowledge. Succession planning is a holistic process that unifies career development, skill building and life management planning for individuals that also aligns with the organization’s business planning practices and corporate goals. By initiating a succession planning process that focuses on career development, organizations empower their employees to focus on continued learning opportunities and encourage them to take a more active role in defining and executing their own career paths. According to recent research, in addition to helping organizations prepare for future leadership needs, succession planning has a positive impact on employee morale, motivation and retention. In corporate cultures in which managers encourage mobility and help employees gain the experience needed to advance or explore opportunities internally, employees are less likely to leave and pursue outside opportunities. Preparing employees for new leadership roles and creating a win-win succession strategy within an organization requires executive buy-in, organizational focus and a commitment to employee empowerment. Because this process takes time, leadership management and development must be embraced as a corporate priority today. Organizations that delay their succession planning efforts and investments are exposing themselves to great risk and uncertainty as the “perfect storm” of workforce trends — retirements, shortage of skilled workers, fewer employees entering the workforce — continues to come together and overwhelm corporations by significantly reducing the talent pool. Shelly Heiden is the executive vice president for global field operations Plateau Systems. She can be reached at editor@TalentMgt.com. Organizations looking to take a bottom-up approach that fosters career management have the option of implementing software solutions that are part of an overall talent management suite that favors a holistic approach to career and development planning, as well as learning, performance and succession management. Although relatively new, integrated talent management software and solutions can facilitate and automate this approach by integrating data from each application into a single system and making that information available across the full talent management suite. For example, integrated talent management systems allow employees to search for training aligned with current job competencies or new career interests, as well as manage their training and certification histories. Although there are several components that comprise a talent management suite, a learning management system (LMS) is the core driver. It serves as the framework for delivering the bottomup approach to succession planning by driving employee learning within the corporate culture. With an LMS in place, organizations can link targeted learning to core competencies, emphasizing job and competency enrichment, opportunities for lateral movement and temporary global assignments that promote cultural awareness and growth. The ultimate goal is to give employees greater latitude in defining their career development goals and driving their own career growth. By integrating career and succession planning, organizations can identify critical positions while enabling employees to develop and execute their individual career plans. Career planning can increase workforce productivity by helping managers and employees create and maintain development plans that dovetail with learning recommendations. Effective career planning puts employees in charge of their career by allowing them to browse career paths, compare skill requirements for targeted roles against their current skills and identify learning and development requirements involved in pursuing new opportunities and transitioning to a new role. Career planning solutions provide individuals with insight into how their skills and competencies map to talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com 47 October 2007 http://www.TalentMgt.com
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