Succession planning
Strategic HR
There’s a lot
of admiring
the problem
without
doing much
about it
succession planning, and
pipeline diversity, linking this to
company strategy and reporting
the gender balance of those in
senior management’. Given
that this new Code will likely
see the NomCo rise to greater
prominence over the next year,
the big questions for HR are
what role should and can it play
in this reinvention?
HR steps up
Helen Pitcher is chair of board
effectiveness consultancy
Advanced Boardroom
Excellence, as well as holding
various chair and board
executive roles. She believes that
the new regulations present HR
with a “superb opportunity” to
raise the profession’s profile and
underline the huge value it can
bring to the business through
effective succession planning.
“The average board doesn’t
have a huge insight into
succession planning,” she says.
“But boards are looking to
appoint people with a broader
range of skills. An HRD can now
say to a chairperson ‘would you
like me to design and run a skills
audit?’ If the chair rates the
HRD then the HR team
has a superb opportunity to
lead here.”
The operative words here
are “if the chair rates the
HRD”. One of the biggest
barriers to HR playing a
leading role is its lack of
credibility in the board’s eyes. In
research by the Center for
Executive Succession virtually
all board members consulted
made the distinction, when
talking about what constitutes
effective succession planning,
between HRDs who they saw as
having credibility and those who
they didn’t. Some even said they
had never seen a credible HRD.
Bharat Shah is the chair of
analytics and behavioural
science firm iPsych Tech. He was
being seen to have that
capability. When she
says this to female HRDs
in particular she often gets a
negative reaction to selfpromotion,
networking or – as
they often put it – ‘schmoozing’.
“When I ask how much time
they spend networking they’ll
say things like ‘it’s so smarmy, I
really don’t like it’,” says Pitcher.
“But networking is about
increasing your external radar
and sharing your views with
other people and the board. I
reframe it and ask them why
they would deprive their
organisation of their skills and
capability. After all, if you don’t
tell people about what you do
you are not going to be visible to
the board.”
Incidentally, this common
female reaction of shying
away from networking is a
contributing factor to the lack
of gender balance generally at
CEO level and within the CEO
talent pool.
Another common scenario
that Pitcher has come across is
that an HRD’s name may come
up in conversation among the
senior executives, but many of
them aren’t sure if they have met
them. This is why taking every
opportunity to share expertise
is so crucial. This could be
formerly CEO of Kodak, as well
as chairing multiple NomCos
and RemCos and being the
deputy chair of the Audit
Commission. His impression of
the HR profession from his
many board experiences hasn’t
been good so far.
“They are more used to being
in their comfort zone, doing the
transactional work as opposed
to the strategic work and
helping leaders. They need to up
their game,” he says.
Succession planning, and its
elevated purpose in boards’ eyes
now, is the perfect platform on
which HR can step up. He adds:
“The change in the Governance
Code requires measuring and
improving succession planning.
HR can add value here, really
take control and be seen as a
shining light leading on this
critical driver of the business.
The Code is a great stroke of
luck for every HRD, which they
can use as leverage.”
Networking
necessity
Raising HR’s
credibility is, according
to Pitcher, a balance
between having
“actual
capability”
and
What does good exec and CEO
succession planning look like?
It’s an ongoing process
It’s based on a job spec grounded in the future of the company
It has a reasonable amount of time to complete the process, from
identifi cation of a candidate to fi lling the role (three to four years)
It involves a board that stays objective and observant up until fi nal decision
It eliminates the possibility of a candidate being favoured early in the process
It involves agreement between the board about the process, the specs, and
the evaluations of candidates without subgroups with differing expectations
There is a transition plan both for the incoming CEO and outgoing CEO
hrmagazine.co.uk February 2020 HR 23
/hrmagazine.co.uk
