HR Succession Planning – Are You Prepared? 

By Ashley Dugger, DBA, SHRM-CP 

As HR professionals, we tend to consider succession planning as a task we assist with for the teams and leaders we support at our organizations. However, we must also dedicate time and attention to our own teams of HR professionals to ensure we have continuously monitored succession plans, cross-training opportunities, and growth and development options to build our own pipeline of future HR leaders and specialists! 

Not only does the Bureau of Labor Statistics predict that there will be “about 16,300 openings for human resources managers … projected each year, on average, over the decade” through 2031, they note that many of the projected openings are to result from needing to replace HR professionals who leave the industry to go to new occupations or exit the labor force entirely (i.e. retirement). Not only does this expected gap pertain to HR managers, but BLS also notes that roles such as HR Specialists are projected to show “81,900 openings … each year, on average, over the decade” for the same reasons noted for HR managers. 

In addition to expected retirements, recent surveys of and qualitative feedback from various HR professionals in different functions of HR showed that stress, burnout, unsupportive leadership, and lack of feeling valued are all contributing to why HR professionals choose to leave the industry and pursue other opportunities, thus creating the need for strong HR succession pipelines and support for HR to retain talent. 

A 2022 survey by Workvivo noted an overwhelming 98% of HR professionals reported feeling recently burnt out, 78% are open to searching for new jobs, and 71% did not feel valued in their current organizations. These statistics underscore the importance of focusing on our HR teams as much as we focus on other departments in the organizations that we support in order to not only drive cultural change where we can in terms of HR feeling valued and included, but also to properly manage workload, cross-training, and development opportunities for HR professionals to keep them engaged and excited about the future of HR. 

Conducting specific root-cause analysis and surveys with your HR teams if they are feeling burnout or not valued might help you pinpoint specific actions you can take in conjunction with your senior leadership team to tackle these issues from the ground up to drive change and hopefully retain your HR team. Taking a deep dive into resource scarcity in terms of software, technology, time, and other tools needed to invest in your HR team’s functionality and free up time for more strategic work will also be beneficial in succession planning. 

In particular, executive-level HR positions tend to be an area where HR teams are failing to properly plan for future talent flow, especially considering many HR professionals choose to specialize in one HR function and lose insight into full-scale strategic HR work needed in senior-level positions, or lack focus on continuing to strengthen business-acumen skills to combine with their HR skills. Creating a formal succession-planning process to build and continuously develop future HR leaders for senior-level positions will require support and participation from other executive leaders at your organization, with regular, ongoing interaction, planning, and engagement with the potential successors. Help these candidates learn the operations of the business and how these different teams interact for organizational success – not just learning the ins and outs of the senior HR position itself. 

Remember to not only teach the successors through knowledge transfer and learning, but have them start taking on impactful tasks and projects to prepare them in a hands-on way for future leadership roles, build their confidence, and start to see themselves in their future positions. Conducting a skills-gap analysis on your HR team to identify strengths and areas of opportunities can help you create a bench of high-potential team members to move through more formal succession-planning activities.

While there may certainly be a gap in executive HR succession planning, make sure you are planning for full HR team succession, not just senior leadership positions. Has the team cross-trained so that if someone unexpectedly left, the work would continue as seamlessly as possible? Creating tangible skills pathways for HR professionals to upskill or reskill in preparation for promotions or career mobility in the HR profession will also be a key action to take in order to start your succession planning. Who on your HR team might enjoy and benefit from shadowing an HR leader or a specialized HR function to learn new skills and be ready if an opening presents itself on the team? Where the work is currently siloed, you may need to immediately cross-train other team members for business-continuity purposes. 

While many are concerned about the impact of AI on HR, here is an opportunity to use AI and tools like ChatGPT to your team’s advantage by having AI-generated scenarios as part of flexible learning opportunities that your team can train with asynchronously. You can pair them with a mentor or teammate to review their replies to the scenario(s) and discuss alternative responses, tactics, or resources that may be helpful to explore in order to most successfully manage the scenario. Combine this type of learning with hands-on training for maximum impact.

Part of building an HR succession pipeline also means getting creative in hiring new HR talent in addition to investing in your current internal talent pool. A 2022 article from SHRM by Debra Cope advises that “being open to candidates who may have transferrable industry experience and skill sets will benefit recruiters” and to refrain from only looking at more traditional, linear pathways that candidates might possess in order to fill HR positions and create succession plans. You might also review the current team structure as you look at projected future needs of both the organization and the HR team itself, and reconfigure as needed to more effectively support the goals of the business and align HR strategy to those goals. 

Seeking out temporary HR talent might also be an option according to SHRM, especially during seasonal peaks such as open enrollment and budget season. As you meet connections at conferences, networking events, and through associations such as SHRM chapters, benchmark what others are doing to prepare their HR talent pipelines. Proactively building your HR succession pipeline doesn’t have to feel overwhelming – start with small steps but act now to plan for success in the future!