Every organisation faces one truth, no matter how big or small the industry: people move on. Leaders resign, managers retire, and high performers are rewarded with promotions. If the organisation isn’t ready, this can cause catastrophic disruption and long-term negative impact to culture, reputation and productivity.
This is why succession planning isn’t just a “nice to have” – it’s a necessity. However, succession planning is only as strong and viable as the data supporting it.
In many businesses, succession planning is informal and heavily biased. Loyalty, tenure, and internal relationships are too often pivotal in choosing successors, while not necessarily qualifying a person as ready to step up or the correct choice of candidate. In today’s talent ecosystem, companies have more reliable ways of choosing leaders, and it is time for them to start using them.
They need to check their bias at the door.
They need to use psychometric data.
The Risk of Traditional Methods
Traditional succession methods often begin by asking who is next in line. However, it is important to consider a person’s skillset, potential and development needs before making these decisions.
Common mistakes include:
- Promoting people based on how long they have been in a company, instead of on how able or experienced they are.
- Promoting top performers at the job, who are individual contributors, into leadership roles with no management experience or aptitude.
- Allowing internal politics and relationships to sway decision-making.
- Blindness to the right competencies, traits, and skills in less vocal or visible performers,
- Hiring externally without consideration of the cultural impact on the organisation
Using Data to Determine Future Leaders
Planning succession should begin with a clear view of talent at your disposal. By using data-driven assessments, you can audit your current talent and skills holdings as you would stocktake your business’s storehouse.
Using this method, evaluate an employee’s skills, knowledge and growth areas across various departments in the workplace. From here, shortlisting candidates and adding context will enable smarter decision-making about who is really ready to lead, and who may need support.
Having the right tools will help you:
- Identify potential within your company
- Clearly see the high performers and high-potential candidates
- Curate and implement development plans specific to future leadership roles
- Be prepared for any sudden changes in leadership
Data collected will reveal much more than what a person has done; it assists in helping companies identify what they can do. This is crucial for building a pipeline of leaders who will be ready in the future.
Building Leadership Through Learning
Once a potential leader is identified, it becomes simpler to begin the process of training the person for the responsibilities that lie ahead.
However, one key thing to note is that training must always be targeted at their specific development areas and tailored to their learning needs. Leadership programmes that are generic or one-off workshops won’t deliver the anticipated results. Future leaders need developmental plans that will address them at their current level and take them to where they need to be for future roles.
With psychometric assessment data, HR and L&D teams will ensure that learning is done in accordance with the specific requirements of a leadership role in their unique organisation. This in turn ensures that every candidate who may be a possible fit for a future role is receiving adequate, focused development in line with the company’s growth trajectory.
And because this data is measurable, companies can track the readiness of their top performers over time, which will help them make better decisions about succession.
Don’t Overlook Communication: It’s a Vital Element
In every role, one key element that is essential in leadership is communication. With the rise of remote work and multicultural teams, it is even more important that leaders know how to communicate effectively. English is the common business language in many organisations and is vital for leaders to be able to lead meetings, draft reports, and collaborate with people externally to ensure the success of their business.
Alison’s English language test within the Psychometric Assessment Suite is a vital tool in this regard. It assists employers:
- To ensure communication standards are met
- Identify future leaders who may need extra assistance with language development
- Help prevent misunderstandings that may arise from improper communication
Even when a future leader is promoted from within the company, it is important that it is not assumed that the person is language-ready. Completing a simple test will identify leaders who are not only able to communicate effectively, but also uncover the path to get them where they need to be.
Removing the Barriers to Accessing Skills Data
Even though there are many benefits, HR and L&D teams still seem to lack access to good skills-based data. They rely heavily on feedback from managers, performance reviews that may be biased, and check-ins that don’t present a full picture.
This leads to leadership gaps, poor skills development planning, and hiring errors that prove to be rather costly.
At Alison, we believe that this shouldn’t be the case, so we’ve built an accessible way for organisations to access the data that can not only overhaul their workforce planning, but also their business’s ability to deliver future growth.
Alison is Changing Workforce Planning
Succession planning isn’t a guessing game. It should be well thought out, intentional and strategic. It should also, and most importantly, be a data-informed process that develops your team and secures the future of your organisation. It’s a toolkit that every business should take advantage of. It helps build the next generation of leaders in a fair and just way.
Many businesses don’t have access to this level of insight, but with Alison’s LMS+, you can reduce the risk of hiring mistakes.
This tool will help you uncover hidden potential and develop a leadership pipeline that’s built to last.
Find out how you can get started today with psychometric assessments in Alison’s LMS+, and take the first step toward a brighter, results-driven future.
