Companies embrace the idea of Succession Planning and Talent Management with great enthusiasm, but rarely put the mechanisms and tools in place to effectively follow through on their initiatives. SuccessFactors Research recently conducted a survey of Succession and Talent Management capabilities across the U.K. and Ireland, and found that this is indeed the case. Companies have initiatives in place, but do not back them up with effective processes and support.

For example,  76% of all companies in the survey were found to have some kind of succession plan in place, yet 40% of companies lacked any process or capability to identify future talent. You simply cannot identify successors effectively, if you do not have a regular process in place  to identify talent within your company. Talent reviews should be the starting point, not the end point of the talent management process. Managers should have plenty of tools to help identify talent. 360 reviews, performance reviews, and competency assessments can all be used to make reasonable assumptions about the potential of an individual.

Losing your best talent can be disastrous during these tough economic times – making Succession Planning a top priority for organisations wanting to build growth and be successful. Organisations routinely encounter turnover across a variety of key positions which often results in significant disruptions if no replacement is readily available. You need to know what you have, at all levels in the organisation, before you can start to think about successors.

SuccessFactors is presenting a  webinar focused on effective succession planning in the U.K. and EMEA, Effective Succession Planning: It’s not just for your CEO, on Tuesday, July 22nd, register here. You can learn more about the tools available to managers, and bring your own questions to our team. You can also read more about the state of Succession planning and talent management in the U.K. and Ireland in the related SuccessFactors Research Data Brief.