One of the questions many employees generally ask is to understand the difference between career and succession planning in organisations. Career planning is for individuals whereas succession planning is for key positions in the organisation.

Let us look at career planning first. Every individual, who joins an organisation wants to climb the corporate ladder. Everyone aspires to reach the highest level possible in the organisation in the shortest possible time.

How do we do career planning ? Career planning is to be done by individuals, managers for their team members and HR for key people in the organisation. Who is ultimately responsible for career planning ? In my view, the individual employee has to take the ultimate responsibility of planning their own careers.

It is like an aspiring sportsperson. We recently saw the world chess champion emerge from India. This young boy at the age of 7 dreamt of becoming the world champion and worked towards it by dedication, commitment and a lot of hard work. He was ably supported by mentors and coaches to realise his dream goal.

Similarly, in the organisational context, every individual needs to have a dream. An aspirational goal to achieve in their own careers. This could be long term, medium term and short term. Once the goal emerges, the individual needs to plan their steps to achieve that goal. The individual’s manager and HR partner could support them in identifying the steps and developing the capabilities to achieve that goal.

The manager has the responsibility to enable career planning of her team members. While the individual should be made ultimately responsible to steer their careers, the manager can be an invaluable mentor or guide in this process.

Human Resources partner can be the facilitator of the process. HR can help the individual and the manager to identify the steps to the goal and also the capabilities required at different stages of the individual’s career.

On the other hand, Succession planning is for key positions in the organisation. This is primarily the role of HR and senior leadership in the organisation. HR needs to identify what could be the key positions in the organisation which are critical. A simple method is to start with the top two levels in the organisational hierarchy and then look at other key positions.

Once positions are identified, HR along with leadership needs to define what are the key capabilities to effectively play those roles. Then identify whether we have suitable people within the organisation, who can be groomed to play those roles. If not, identify people outside the organisation, who could be inducted so that they can be developed as successors for key positions.

To summarise, career planning is for individuals and every employee has to take responsibility for their own careers. They need to be supported by their managers and HR to evolve the steps, develop the capabilities and move towards their career goals.

On the other hand, succession planning is for key positions. HR & leadership have to identify the key positions, the capabilities required for those positions and also the people who can be groomed to take over those positions in the future. This could be from within or outside the organisation. Further their development to make them ready to take over these roles in the future needs to be planned and executed.

Career planning is for individuals and succession planning is for key positions.

S Ramesh Shankar

23rd Dec 2024