Succession planning: How to fill the gaps with HRMS software

Succession planning is the process of identifying critical roles within an organization and preparing qualified candidates to fill them when needed.

For many companies, it remains an intense, paper-driven exercise based on personal knowledge of staff skills and talents by HR and leadership.  It's also, however, an area where your HRMS can drive competitive advantage.

Lay the foundation with performance data

For many years, HRMS software tracked little in the way of employee reviews, beyond a year-end rating.

Now, however, these systems offer much more in the way of evaluating performance, and niche systems provide in-depth options to rate employee performance and skills.

Check out our talent management articles for advice on employee on/offboarding, identifying skill gaps and more.

Are you still doing employee reviews in Word documents that sit in a shared folder? Or is the evaluation process minimal, a cursory exercise of managers writing one-sentence answers when evaluating performance?

A systematic approach to evaluations matters because it establishes credibility and ensures robust and full feedback. By putting evaluations and performance insight into your HRMS succession planning module, you gain better tracking capabilities (as well as more visibility and transparency to identify your upcoming talent). This data becomes the baseline for all succession planning activities. transparency to identify your upcoming talent.

Maximize data capabilities and self-service options

Many HRMS vendors offer the possibility to track extended details about employees such as education, experience and willingness to relocate. However, these data elements are often deemed 'nice to have' rather than 'planning essentials'.

Knowing who you have available is a first step to be able to make three or five-year projections of where staff will be needed to fill open positions. 

Once you understand your talent pool, you can connect the dots to ensure that staff receive the training or internal experience needed to fill an identified role. What details would help your decision-making?

Certifications, languages and other competencies are usually self-service data possibilities that will help you to identify internal talent, and most employees will fill in such data when given the possibility.

Map talent structure and career paths

Most HRMS platforms include an organizational structure or a rollup of positions. There is usually an option to assign competencies or skills to such a structure. The next logical step is to compare your employee population against those needed skills, particularly when projecting future organizational needs.

Different types of succession planning exist, e.g., emergency replacement plans to long-term leadership development, but all depend on accurate data.

The meaning becomes clear when you see how disciplined data helps your succession planning system fuel the answers you need to fill your organizational gaps. If you're looking for a new succession planning system, check out our top 10 HRMS comparison guide for ideas and inspiration.