Effective Succession Planning : A Roadmap to Employee Retention

Abstract

Retaining top performing talent is a major concern to organization today, thus prompting organizations to seek for talent management practices such as succession planning to help them achieve this goal. This paper is a theoretical review of literature on succession planning and employee retention in organizations. The main objectives of the paper are: to do an expository review on the concept of succession planning and employee retention; to uncover what benefits organizations stand to gain by implementing a succession plan; to ascertain the impact of not having an effective succession plan on employee retention metrics; and to establish how organizations can use succession planning programs to retain and sustain talented and competent employees. From reviewed literature, the paper established that succession planning has a great influence on employee retention. It thus, concluded that organizations require an effective succession planning program to retain its valuable talents in this era of talent hunt. It further recommended a ten point roadmap to effective succession planning; amongst which is, that organizations need to maintain a culture of communicating to their employees, prospects of their career advancement right from the moment of joining the organization as this would motivate the employees to stay, thus minimizing turnover rate and boosting retention.