Back to BlogsThe succession planning process in 7 easy steps
Organisations often stumble when key leaders depart unexpectedly, causing disruption, loss of momentum or strategic drift. This article sets out a clear, actionable roadmap for implementing a succession planning process that ensures leadership continuity, nurtures talent, and strengthens retention.
11.03.2026 · 4 min read
The following sections define succession planning, explore different approaches, take readers through a step-by-step implementation approach (including tool suggestions), highlight executive-level considerations, and outline practical next steps.
Succession planning decoded
The structured, forward-looking process of identifying, assessing, and developing employees ensures key roles when needed. Personnel changes are inevitable and natural, as transitions may occur through retirement, promotion, or unexpected exits. But effective planning makes leadership continuity is deliberate, not reactive.
Many organisations, unfortunately, fall short of having a plan in place. A 2024 SHRM survey revealed that 56% of HR professionals report their organisations lack a formal succession plan. This causes uncertainty in leadership transitions, declining morale, disrupted execution, and the loss of critical expertise.
On the other hand, a proactive succession planning process mitigates business risk, preserves institutional knowledge, strengthens engagement, and links talent development directly to the organisation's long-term goals.
Core elements of leadership development programs
Every effective succession planning process is built on core elements that align leadership development with strategic goals and ensure sustained organisational resilience. These are:
- Strategic alignment, tying leadership requirements to future organisational direction.
- Talent identification and assessment using data-driven evaluation of potential successors.
- Development planning with a focus on learning, mentoring, and role-based development to close capability gaps.
- Monitoring and reviewing with ongoing tracking, feedback, and scenario testing.
- Governance and accountability, defining ownership across HR, leadership, and the board.
Different approaches to succession planning
Organisations have many tools at their disposal when it comes to creating a succession plan. The right approach depends on organisational maturity, size, culture, and available talent, ensuring that each strategy aligns with both current needs and future growth objectives. Key approaches include:
Role-based succession planning: Successors are identified for specific positions, often ensuring clarity for mission-critical roles. This approach provides clear visibility on who will step in if a key leader departs, reducing uncertainty and ensuring continuity in essential operations.
Skill- or competency-based pipelines: Focuses on developing essential capabilities, such as digital leadership or change management, that cut across multiple roles. This builds a broader, more adaptable pool of talent, allowing organisations to respond effectively as roles evolve, and new skills become critical.
Tiered pipeline models: builds talent layers at different organisational levels, such as team leaders, middle management, and senior executives, to create a steady internal progression path. A continuous flow of ready talent and helps sustain leadership depth across the organisation is ensured.
Emergency or contingency planning: Prepares short-term “ready now” leaders who can step in immediately during unexpected vacancies. Having this plan in place minimises disruption and maintains stability during leadership transitions or unforeseen absences.
Dual-track planning: Combines internal development with external benchmarking, ensuring access to both internal and market-ready talent. This allows organisations to identify skill gaps early and bring in external expertise when internal pipelines need reinforcement.
Skill-based and hybrid models are becoming more prevalent as organisations move toward agile structures where roles evolve quickly, and leadership capabilities matter more than titles. Selecting the right combination of approaches enables a flexible, scalable succession planning strategy that evolves with business needs.
Building an effective succession planning process in 7 steps
Developing a structured succession planning process requires more than having access to a talent recruitment service. The execution of the plan matters, as is evident by Harvard Business Review's study, in which HR leaders rated their succession planning effectiveness at just 5.5 out of 10.
Drafting an effective process calls for connecting leadership readiness with long-term business strategy. Organisations must continuously assess talent and create development opportunities that bridge skill gaps.
Below chart maps the seven key steps organisations should take, the actions and software solutions that help with implementation and how organisations can leverage software to translate strategy into a sustainable, data-driven leadership pipeline.
| Step | Key actions | Software example |
|---|---|---|
| Define strategic leadership requirements | Conduct workshops with leadership to align on future direction and expectations. Update the competency framework to reflect technical and behavioural needs. Map competencies to current and emerging roles. | A comprehensive HR platform like Zalaris PeopleHub can model positions, competencies and decision rights, giving HR and leaders a single source of truth. |
| Identify critical roles and priority tiers | Rank positions by strategic importance, business risk, and replacement difficulty. Evaluate bench strength for each tier to understand internal capability. Shortlist roles where leadership gaps would most affect business performance. | PeopleHub can provide a source of organisation data for segmentation, readiness heatmaps, pipeline strength and risk indication across roles. |
| Assess internal candidates objectively | Use multi-source evaluations, performance data, and psychometric testing. Benchmark candidates against defined leadership competencies. Categorise readiness levels to guide development focus. | Full-suite platforms like SAP SuccessFactors enable evidence-based assessments and consistent ratings across the succession planning process. |
| Design development and career pathways | Create tailored development plans blending learning, mentoring, and rotations. Integrate leadership goals into annual performance reviews. Assign mentors or executive sponsors to accelerate readiness. | Tools like SAP Talent Management can track goals, learning completions and internal mobility, so development plans translate into measurable progress for each succession plan example. |
| Tools like SAP Talent Management can track goals, learning completions and internal mobility, so development plans translate into measurable progress for each succession plan example. | Offer temporary assignments or secondments to build strategic experience. Lead cross-functional projects to strengthen decision-making skills. Use deputy or acting roles to provide leadership visibility. | A modular HCM suite helps manage position/assignment workflows, as well as manage secondments. |
| Monitor, review, and refine | Hold biannual succession review meetings with HR and business leaders. Refresh readiness data and development progress regularly. Track turnover risk and pipeline strength through analytics dashboards. | With tools such as Qualtrics EX, organisations can capture feedback and turn this information into actionable insights, visualising readiness and risk in real time. |
| Communicate and embed succession into culture | Clarify ownership across HR, leadership, and the board. Share expectations and progress transparently. Integrate succession discussions into strategy and workforce reviews. | Digital file management tools integrated with chosen HCM platforms add transparency and audit-readiness to the process. |
Next steps towards an effective succession planning process
A structured succession planning process empowers organisations to anticipate leadership changes, retain high-potential talent, and safeguard strategic continuity. The journey begins with aligning leadership needs to strategy, prioritising critical roles, assessing candidates objectively, crafting development plans, deploying and monitoring progress, and embedding governance and communication.
Zalaris specialises in delivering holistic talent and HR solutions, integrating succession planning modules into broader human capital frameworks. We help organisations deploy data-driven, scalable succession planning strategies, providing analytics, integration, implementation support and best practice frameworks tailored to organisational needs.
To stay ahead of leadership risk and build a resilient bench of future leaders today, connect with the Zalaris team today.
