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Sucession Planning - Part 2

Wednesday 17th January 2018

The move to succession planning must be one bought in from the CEO and cascaded down at every level. Potential leaders should be identified from junior level up.

You will not retain junior procurement professionals who are often initially motivated and energetic, if you constantly recruit externally and pay the new candidate twice as much as the junior team member. This is un loyal and disrespectful. If that procurement member is a valued member of the team, invest in them. Invest in their training and up skill them. Try a performance related pay contract with your existing junior procurement individual. incremental pay increases dependent on key milestones achieved.

There is no stronger measure of performance than working with someone full time and knowing their on-the-job ability through accumulative performance and deliverance.
Spend time working on their personal development plans (PDP's) where do they see themselves in 5 years and why?

It's a sensible idea to move appraisals/performance related meetings from career progression discussions. Having this combined in one, once a year meeting just isn't sufficient.

Take an active role in their progression, move your team forward and don't always be the one delivering bad news. Do a hard and soft skills matrix for each member - where do they sit? How do they compare? Which skills can they work on/train to improve and most importantly don't dangle the carrot - they'll get bored and leave. It's that simple.

See below Susan Avery's point on lateral moves.

"This is one of the best development activities, and also one of the most overlooked. Be sure to set people up for success when you do this (rather than the "sink or swim" approach that most companies take to training). Nobody will want to take a lateral career opportunity if they've seen it derail someone else's career."

(http://www.mypurchasingcenter.com/purchasing/blogs/why-procurement-needs-succession-plan/)