How do I get started with Succession Planning?

Setting up your instance for succession planning

Data ingestion and feature configurations must be active before a succession plan can be created. This means that prior to creating a plan, your company-specific configurations are set up and your data is ready and available in the system.

If your succession planning pages look empty, it is likely that your company-specific data has not been loaded. To resolve this issue, reach out to the Eightfold support team.

Restricting permissions

Due to the sensitive nature of succession planning and employee development information, there are controls on permissions.

Accessing Succession Planning

You can access Eightfold Succession Planning in Career Hub by navigating to the top menu bar displayed on the main My Career Hub page. In the top menu bar, HRBPs select Succession Planning while managers select Team > Succession Planning. This navigates you to the succession planning home page.

Exploring the home page

When you first enter the home page, the following features and information are presented in the heat map view:

• Features

  • Search bar with advanced toggle filters

  • Notifications of succession plan actions

  • Metrics on pipeline strength and diversity

  • Download talent card feature

• Succession plan heat map view

  • Role criticality

  • Incumbent name, role, location, and time in role by years

  • Business function for succession plan role

  • Successors for role

  • Succession readiness state of each successor

HRBP and manager access types

Employees shown on the home page correspond to the configured permissions. Although access is customizable, succession planning provides two general types of access to the range of employees, HRBP access and manager access:

• For a manager, either direct or indirect reports are displayed on the home page controlled by another toggle option.

• For the HRBP, all employees belonging to the same business function, location, or job level as the HRBP are on display.

Managers are able to view only the succession plans of their direct reports and total reports. Manager access depicts a team perspective to planning and allows managers to design and track succession plans for their team members. This shared information allows for a collaborative effort between HRBPs, leadership, and management.

The HRBP view of succession planning can potentially include a larger set of employees than the manager’s view. For HRBPs, restrictions and permission controls can be placed on multiple levels, including the following:

• Business unit (BU)

• Job level

• Geolocation

For example, an HRBP account can be restricted to accessing succession plans for roles in Canada, within the Finance BU, and at Director-level and below. Only employees that fit these restrictions appear in the heat map view.

The heat map view

Information on the succession planning home page is presented in the heat map view. The heat map view displays a snapshot of core metrics such as diversity and role criticality. The heat map view is the color-coded values presented in tabular format for each plan component.

Diversity metrics provide dynamically computed gender and ethnicity percentages for succession plans. With this, leaders can ensure that their plans are in alignment with corporate goals regarding diversity and inclusion.

Role criticality tags indicate which roles are the most urgent or highest priority by labeling them with company-defined tags. Tags can be tailored to match internal references to critical roles or groups of roles.

View filters

The one-dimensional toggle search filters include Title, Business function, Location, Manager name, and Role criticality. These filters can be customized based on your organization’s needs; work with your Engagement Manager to determine what's possible.

Managers have an additional ability to filter by direct reports (and total reports, if applicable):

• The direct/total reports dropdown filter allows users to obtain results pertaining to direct and indirect reports. The direct reports filter allows managers to filter the list of incumbents displayed to only those that report directly to them.

• The total reports filter is intended for upper management personnel such as senior managers, directors, and VPs. With this feature, users can view all of the teams that report to them on varying levels. Levels are classified as Level +1, Level +2, and Level +3.

Search bar

The search bar is located near the top of the page and accepts input items such as an incumbent’s name, location, or business function. This feature lets you identify potential successors for a role.

One-dimensional toggle filters allow users to filter search results using a single dimension such as role, business function, role criticality, or location. Selecting a value listed under a given filter has the effect of either applying or removing that value from the search. Multiple values are permitted. Examples of business function values are sales, marketing, nursing, and warehouse.

After selection, a purple dot is added to the right side of the filter’s name. This dot indicates that the filter has been applied to the search query.