Setup Considerations: Succession

What It Is

Succession is the process of identifying candidates who are ready to move into a position. You can track the preparedness of internal and external candidates to take up a position using:

Succession plans.

Succession pools.

Business Benefits

Tracking succession candidates helps:

Reduce the days to fill vacancies for important roles.

Ensure that these roles are continuously occupied.

Developing internal candidates for succession contributes to employee engagement and advancement.

Use Cases

You can use succession plans to fill:

High-level leadership positions in the organization.

Positions requiring advanced knowledge of proprietary technology.

Positions requiring specialized skills, crucial for business success.

Succession pools track candidates that qualify for particular job profiles and are suitable for filling lower-level jobs such as first- or second-level managers.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
What's the difference between talent pools and succession pools?	Succession pools enable you to assess the readiness of internal candidates and consider external candidates for job profiles. You can use talent pools more generally. Example: to organize workers for development, tracking, and planning purposes. You can configure talent pools to manually or automatically populate workers based on certain qualifications, whereas you must manually populate succession pools. You can populate succession plans from talent pools but not succession pools.
Who can you add to succession pools and plans?	You can add internal and external candidates who have potential to develop into the positions you're tracking. You can create confidential prospects to add to succession pools and plans.
Which roles should you prioritize for succession?	To ensure a smooth succession, prioritize roles that are key for business success such as the executive and leadership levels. The further you go down the organization for succession planning, you must track candidates for a greater quantity of positions.
Who is responsible for managing succession?	You can assign roles to help manage succession, including: Succession partners who perform succession management tasks for assigned organizations and approve business process events. Succession pool managers who perform succession management tasks for assigned succession pools. This role doesn't have approval authority, which is assigned to the creator of the succession pool. Talent administrators who create and maintain all talent setup data. This role has approval authority for talent management business processes.
How do succession plans and pools differ for different staffing models?	You can consider these differences when determining whether to use succession plans, pools, or both in your organization. When a worker leaves a position in a job management organization, the succession plan no longer persists with that position, and you must populate another plan for that position. In a position management organization, the succession plan persists until the position closes, regardless of whether or not a worker occupies the position. However, when a succession plan separates from the position in either staffing model, you can restore the succession plan using the Move Succession Plan task. Succession pools apply only to job profiles, which associate well with the job management staffing model. However, both staffing models support succession pools.
What helps inform succession?	You can use these measures of employee performance and development to inform succession planning in your organization: Assess potential. Calibration. Performance review. Talent review.

Recommendations

Assess potential as part of succession to provide additional insight into existing candidates and identify new candidates for succession.

Enable nomination tracking so that managers can nominate employees to job profiles as part of potential assessment. Talent administrators can view nominees by filtering workers using the Nominations facet filter on the

Find Workers

report, and decide to add them to succession pools or plans.

To ensure an organization-wide approach to succession, create succession strategies and assign them to candidates.

Enable the critical job check box on job profiles and position restrictions. Critical roles inform succession-related reports, such as:

Critical Open Positions

Find Workers

Succession Plans for Critical Positions

Base succession planning on supervisory organizations and not on intersection, location, and other related security groups and roles.

Requirements

Define readiness values to make them available to select on succession plans. You can't add candidates on succession plans unless you select a readiness value.

Limitations

Succession plans and pools don’t auto-populate or suggest candidates based on skills related to the position. However, you can configure dynamic talent pools to populate succession plans.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

Talent pool domains enable the same functionality as succession pools.

Domains	Considerations
Indexed Data Source: Positions in the Jobs & Positions functional area.	Grants access to the Find Positions Without Succession Plans report.
Mass Operation Management in the System functional area.	Enables you to conduct potential assessments for a large number of supervisory organizations by mass launching the Assess My Team's Potential.
Set Up: Recruiting in the Recruiting functional area.	Enables you to define prospect categories for succession pools, such as Succession Candidate. Categories enable you to filter and search for external succession candidates.
Set Up: Succession in the Talent Pipeline functional area.	Enables you to create values that define candidates’ readiness to move into a position. You can also enable nomination tracking, identify external candidates, and create succession strategies.
Set Up: Talent in the Talent Pipeline functional area.	Enables you to create values that define candidate attributes, such as: Potential Retention Loss impact Achievable levels
Talent Pool: Create in the Talent Pipeline functional area.	Enables you to create succession pools.
Worker Data: Succession in the Talent Pipeline functional area.	Enables administrators and partners to manage and view succession plans for the positions they support.
Worker Data: Succession Plan-Any in the Talent Pipeline functional area.	Enables managers to view the succession plans workers are in, but not the details within the plans.

Business Processes

Business Processes	Considerations
Manage Succession Plan	Enables you to track succession plan candidates.
Remove Worker From Talent	Enables you to automatically remove workers from succession plans and succession pools upon termination.
Start Development Plan	You can include potential assessment as a subprocess of Start Development Plan . You can use the results of the potential assessment to inform succession.
Start Performance Review	You can include potential assessment as a subprocess of Start Performance Review . You can use the results of both performance review and potential assessment to inform succession.

Reporting

Report	Considerations
Find Workers	You can directly compare up to 5 workers to assess candidates for succession.
Succession Planning Summary	You can view details of all succession plans for the organization.
Succession Profile	You can view and edit the worker succession plans and add workers to other succession plans.

You can add these reports to your Talent dashboard to view analytics for succession:

Average # of Successors for Position

Retirement Eligibility by Critical Job

Top Talent on Succession Plans

Succession Plans at Risk

Integrations

No impact.

Connections and Touch points

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.