Succession Plan

A succession plan names a position that would hurt to lose, says how urgent the risk of losing it is, and lists the people who could step into it and how soon. The plan is held against the position, not against the person sitting in it, so it survives the day the holder resigns, which is the day it exists for.

Where

People Directory › Setup › Succession Plan

Who uses it

The HR manager with the department head, reviewed once or twice a year

When

After employees and positions exist. Usually in the second phase, not at go live.

Needs first

Position, Employee Basic Information, Department

Shape

One record per position covered, with a line per candidate successor

What it is for

In a 500 person factory there are perhaps fifteen jobs where a resignation causes real damage: the maintenance engineer who is the only person who can set the old German machine, the finance manager who closes the books, the plant manager. Everybody in the room knows which fifteen. Nobody has written it down, and nobody has written down who could take over.

This screen is that list. Each record is one of those positions, with two judgements and a bench:

• Criticality is how much damage losing the job does.
• Risk of Loss is how likely you are to lose the person in it soon.
• The lines are the bench, each successor with a readiness, the gap that stands between them and the job, and the development action that would close it.

The report the screen exists to produce is the intersection: high risk of loss with nobody ready. That is the list the HR manager takes into the management meeting. A critical job with three people ready now is not a problem. A medium job whose holder retires in four months and has no bench is.

Because the plan is held against the position, the record stays valid when the holder leaves. You record who is currently in the job, but the plan is not theirs. The new holder arrives, the plan is still there, and the bench you built is still the bench.

Every field, in plain words

Plan

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Succession Plan	The short code for this plan.	SP-PLANTMGR	Required. Must be unique. Naming it after the position it covers keeps the list readable.
Name	The plan written out.	Succession - Plant Manager	Required.
Active	Whether this plan is live.	Tick it.	Untick it when the plan is retired, for example when the position no longer exists. An inactive plan stays readable and drops out of the live reporting.

Position Covered

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Position	The job the plan covers.	PLTMGR - Plant Manager	Required. Pick it from the list. This is the anchor of the whole record. See Position.
Position Name	The job title in words.	Fills itself from the Position. Leave it.
Department	Where the job sits.	PROD - Production	Pick it from the list. It tells the reader which part of the business is exposed. See Department.
Department Name	The department in words.	Fills itself from the Department. Leave it.
Current Holder	The employee in the job today.	EMP-00142 - Imran Qureshi	Pick them from the list. Recorded so the plan reads in context. They cannot also be listed as their own successor.
Current Holder Name	The holder in words.	Fills itself from the Current Holder. Leave it.

Risk

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Criticality	How much damage losing this job does.	CRIT - Business Critical	Required. Pick one of the four values below.
Risk of Loss	How likely you are to lose the holder soon.	MED - Medium	Pick one of the three values below.
Retirement Date	The date the current holder is due to retire, where that is the known reason for the risk.	31-03-2027	Leave blank when retirement is not the issue. A date here is the simplest honest justification for a high risk of loss.
Review Date	When this plan should next be looked at.	01-07-2026	Set it to the next planning cycle. It is the field that stops a plan silently going stale.
Remarks	Anything the reader needs that the fields do not carry.	Holder has indicated he will not relocate to the new site.	Free text.

Criticality - how much it hurts to lose the job:

• CRIT Business Critical - the business stops or a licence is at risk. Reserve it for a handful of jobs.
• HIGH High - serious disruption for weeks.
• MED Medium - noticeable disruption, absorbed by the team.
• LOW Low - covered easily. Usually not worth a plan at all.

Risk of Loss - how likely the holder is to go soon:

• HIGH High - retiring, resigning, serving notice, or openly looking.
• MED Medium - no signal either way, but the market for that skill is hot.
• LOW Low - settled and likely to stay.

Successors

The bench. At least one line is required, a plan with nobody on it is not a plan.

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Line #	The line number.	Fills itself. Leave it.
Employee	The candidate successor.	EMP-00318 - Ayesha Siddiqui	Required. Pick them from the list. Each person can appear once. The current holder cannot be listed.
Name	The candidate in words.	Fills itself from the Employee. Leave it.
Rank	The order of preference.	Leave it blank or at zero and it fills itself from the order you entered the lines in.	Type a number only if you want an order different from the order on screen.
Readiness	How soon this person could do the job.	1Y - Ready in 1 Year	Required. Pick one of the five values below.
Gaps	What stands between them and the job.	No exposure to the export compliance side. Has never run a shutdown.	Free text. Write it plainly, this is the sentence the development action answers.
Development Action	What you are going to do about the gap.	Second him onto the next shutdown as deputy. Nominate for the export documentation course.	Free text. A gap with no action is how a bench stays unready for three years.
Primary	Marks the first choice.	Tick it on exactly one line.	Required on one line and only one. The plan will not save with none ticked, and will not save with two.
Remarks	Anything else about this candidate.	Prefers Karachi, will not move to Lahore.	Free text.

Readiness - how soon the candidate could take the job:

• NOW Ready Now - could step in this month. This is the value that turns a risk into a non problem.
• 1Y Ready in 1 Year - nearly there, one or two gaps to close.
• 2Y Ready in 2 Years - the right person, needs real exposure first.
• 3Y Ready in 3+ Years - a long shot but a genuine candidate.
• DEV Long Term Development - on the list for development, not for this job soon. Use it to recognise talent without implying cover.

How to configure it

1. Employees and positions must already exist. This is not a go live screen, run it once the record is loaded and HR trusts it.
2. With the management team, list the positions where a resignation would cause real damage. Expect ten to twenty in a 500 person company. Do not plan every position, a plan nobody reviews is worse than no plan.
3. For the first of them, create the record: code SP-PLANTMGR, name Succession - Plant Manager, tick Active.
4. Pick the Position, the Department and the Current Holder. The name fields fill themselves.
5. Set Criticality and Risk of Loss. Be strict with CRIT, if a third of your plans are business critical the word has stopped meaning anything.
6. If retirement is the reason for the risk, enter the Retirement Date. Always enter a Review Date.
7. Add a line per candidate. Pick the Employee, set the Readiness, and write the Gaps and the Development Action in words a reader will understand a year from now.
8. Tick Primary on the first choice, on one line only. Leave Rank alone unless you want a different order from the one on screen.
9. Save and move to the next position. When you have finished, read the whole set looking for high risk with nobody ready. That short list is the output.
10. At each review date, revisit the readiness on every line. Readiness improves only if the development actions were actually done.

Scenarios

Our plant manager retires in eighteen months and nobody can replace him

That is one record with CRIT criticality, HIGH risk of loss and the retirement date filled in. If the only candidate is two years away, the record says 2Y readiness and the honest conclusion is that the gap must close faster or the job must be recruited externally. The screen will not soften that for you, which is the point of writing it down.

One person is the successor for three different positions

List them on all three plans. Nothing stops it, and it is useful to see: a bench of one person covering three critical jobs is not a bench, it is the same single point of failure counted three times. The report reads better than the conversation does.

The current holder resigned last month

Open the plan, change the Current Holder to the new person once they are appointed, and reassess the bench. The plan itself does not need recreating. This is exactly why it is held against the position.

Two managers each insist their candidate is first choice

Only one line can carry Primary, so the record forces the decision rather than recording both. Put the second choice on the line beneath with no tick, and use Rank if the order on screen does not reflect the agreed preference.

We want the plan but we do not want employees to see it

Succession planning is held in HR. Who can open this screen is a question of user rights, set outside this screen with the rest of the rights configuration.

What it is connected to

• Needs Position, Employee Basic Information and Department to exist first.
• The plan is held against the position, so a change of holder on Employee Organization Assignment does not disturb it. Only the Current Holder field needs updating.
• Nothing outside this screen reads the plan. It is a management record and a report, not an input to pay, performance or recruitment. If a successor is actually promoted, that happens on their Employee Organization Assignment as any other promotion would.
• The development actions you write here are often delivered as training. Nominating the successor happens on Training Schedule, which does not read this screen, so somebody has to carry the action across.

If something looks wrong

• "It will not save, it wants a primary successor" - exactly one line must be ticked as Primary. None ticked is refused, and so is more than one.
• "It says the successor is listed more than once" - the same employee appears on two lines. Remove one.
• "It will not let us add the current holder as a successor" - correct, a person cannot succeed themselves. The field is there to record who is in the job, not who follows them.
• "It will not save with no lines" - a plan needs at least one successor. If genuinely nobody can do the job, that is the finding, and it belongs in Remarks with the honest external recruitment plan beside it.
• "The ranks are not in the order we wanted" - rank fills itself from the order the lines were entered in. Type the numbers you want instead.
• "A plan from two years ago is still showing in the review list" - its Review Date was never moved and Active was never unticked.