Leadership advisory
Eric Salmon & Partners is qualified to assist organisations with the complex task of succession planning, helping in the design of an effective, fair and credible process and in the creation of a more sustainable path for employee engagement, retention and productivity.
From a corporate governance perspective, the approach to succession planning rapidly shifted from a set of practices to an opportunity to share a top-down vision of the firm’s development. It also highlighted the importance of governing firms through principles instead of practices: the quality of human capital – including selection, retention and succession of key executives – is one of the key principles of modern governance.
Through our approach, we help our clients improve the effectiveness of their succession planning and the impact on their businesses, assessing the readiness of the management team, preparing the pipeline for each critical role and designing consistent career and development paths to support the growth of successors. We consider the organisation’s strategy, culture and needs and combine our strong market and people knowledge skills from our executive search practice, with our grounded methodologies to assess people.
Case study
An insurance company looking for support in C-suite succession planning
Context
A listed insurance company, addressing broad change management activity, wanted to increase awareness of its organisation and strengthen its internal succession pipeline.
approach
- Identification of key positions to be reviewed for succession planning purposes
- Assessment interviews with incumbents of each key position and potential successors
- Preparation of a risk management dashboard
- Analysis of the pipeline, to assess the mix of competencies and experience and readiness to cover the role
outcome
- An overview of the succession risk to have key positions vacant and a related recovery plan
- Deep analysis of the potential and experience of the executives and the firm’s internal pipeline
- Individual development plans as a tool to support next generation leaders for key roles