One of the key challenges that has been arising through COVID-19 is how to backfill your current team and keep the wheelhouse turning should any of your people fall ill…
Succession planning is usually the domain of the C-suite or executive team, with detailed development plans for internally identified talent or sourcing strategies in place to find external talent when there are no internal resources identified to be ready to step into those senior shoes.
BUT…
Not all critical roles are executive or senior positions and not all executive and/or senior positions are critical – especially in this COVID-19 environment!
What is less focussed on in many organisations, are the mid-level managers and supervisory roles, and the operational “core contributor” roles. The roles that keep the business going and the products and/or services flowing!
Understanding what roles in your organisation are critical, may mean using a different lens than you would normally!
Critical roles are those that have high impact on your business and the ability to drive your business strategy or have high levels of tacit knowledge.
Specialists are roles that require specialised training and have a scarce skill set that cannot be developed inhouse or require a high initial investment. Specialists are rarely seen as critical roles, and yet, through this current pandemic, are clearly the roles that require emergency succession planning and an identified “bench” to be able to backfill quickly.
Your core roles are at the heart of the organisation and form literally, the core, of your business and are also usually underestimated in their “criticality”.
Workforce segmentation based on skills, investment and business impact allows you to quickly identify where you need to start with your emergency succession and/or backfill planning, and to focus your HR delivery priorities and talent strategies.
Have you undertaken your emergency bench review to quickly identify your gaps and start to plan how to fill them?
Building a strong bench shouldn’t be saved just for emergencies – strategic workforce planning is fundamental to a strong organisation now and moving out of this pandemic to our new normal.
Head to our website for some free workforce planning to give you a starting point on how to identify and categorise your workforce to build out your critical roles and skills profiles. Alternatively, you can purchase the Six Step Simple Succession Planning Framework below.
If you need support with your immediate or longer term recovery planning, please reach out for a confidential, no-obligation chat.
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