The CEO of a national utility player was increasingly concerned with succession planning. The organisation iscomprised of very experienced senior roles with less experienced / junior teams below them. At the same time,the organisation is aware that its total rewards package is less competitive than the wider industries
There was a need to understand the state of succession in the business including the critical roles, availability ofsuccessors, and the near and long-term requirements around mitigating succession risk
Our Approach
Conducted discovery sessions with senior stakeholders to understand the end-to-end value chain, as well asteam experience and how knowledge is managed both institutionally and informally
Researched international best practice methodologies to understand best in class approach for classifying criticalroles to inform our approach to defining critical, specialist, professional and specialist roles
Developed a mechanism to identify the criticality of roles in the business reviewing a range of weighted criteriapertaining to 1) Impact on value chain and 2) Ease of replacement considering the E2E value chain as well aslabour market conditions and role requirements. The tool was designed to be entirely customisable, enabling HRto easily change the framework to meet any evolving business needs
Conducted critical roles assessment with N-1 and select N-2 groups to identify critical role. Questions for eachcriteria in the tool had set answers with a 3-scale answer system, with questions designed to increase theobjectivity of stakeholder responses
Developed a succession risk mitigation plan including retention incentives targeting critical roles and a broadertwo track succession plan, combining urgent crisis interventions to stabilise inflight roles with longer-termplanning to protect continuity and knowledge
Key Outcomes
Clear visibility of succession risk across the organisation, with a list of identified critical roles and targeted retention incentives – both costed and those that have 0 cost to the company.
A role classification framework enabling the organisation to consistently distinguish between critical, specialist, professional and specialist roles based on business impact rather.
A targeted succession risk mitigation plan, Immediate retention interventions for high- risk, critical roles
A targeted succession risk mitigation plan, two-track succession approach balancing short-term stabilisation of inflight risks with longer-term planning to safeguard continuity, capability and institutional knowledge.
