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Succession Planning

Aiding Succession with an MRI of the Workforce

Tracy Cox

The efficacy of an organization’s succession plans can be improved with the aid of a powerful diagnostic tool that provides an MRI of the workforce and its inner workings.
Called social network analysis (SNA), the tool identifies the employees who might be the organization’s most important value brokers — even when their contributions might be the company’s best-kept secret.

Who are these employees? They’re the ones others rely on when they need trusted information or support to help create an innovative product, explore a new opportunity or execute the next big idea.

Learning who these value brokers are is essential for overcoming the looming talent crisis and ensuring an effective succession plan for the organization’s critical talent. If they’re unrecognized, they might leave. If they’re about to retire, they must be replaced.

SNA singles out the value brokers with the aid of an employee survey that tells management with whom employees collaborate. The linkages are shown in a diagram that resembles an airline route map, which is accompanied by a statistical analysis that describes the character of the linkages and includes performance metrics.

Managers are finding SNA particularly useful for identifying the employees who serve as critical links between individuals or groups whose collaboration is essential for success. The loss of one of these employees, whether by retirement or lack of recognition, can be especially detrimental.

SNA also identifies the employees who have few linkages with others. These employees might be unconnected for a range of reasons, including job design limitations, location in a remote facility, cultural differences or beliefs (often mistaken) that they lack needed skills.

Whatever the reason, research shows these employees are more likely to leave the workforce than others.

Conversely, SNA singles out the employees who have too many connections. If these employees feel they cannot provide the collaborative support that’s expected of them, they can experience burnout, which leads to their defection from the organization.

Once SNA identifies the organization’s value brokers, they can be put on the fast track for succession planning purposes. Moreover, management can study their collaborative skills competencies and recruit for those competencies in the future.

SNA is a valuable tool in a tight labor market for yet another reason: It can leverage the effectiveness of existing employees.

As the organization’s dynamics are better understood, knowledge sharing can be accelerated. Best practices can be adopted more easily. Management can replicate the most effective networks by redefining roles and staffing levels, as well as by allocating resources more advantageously.

Organizations that are using SNA to full advantage are helping their value brokers gain additional collaborative skills so they become even more productive. As part of the process, they give the brokers responsibility for conducting significant projects and empower them to secure the resources they need for these projects.