Australian businesses are being urged to implement succession planning in their internal recruitment processes in order to win the 'war for talent'. According to a recent survey on succession planning by Xpert HR, less than 40% of all Australian businesses had undertaken succession strategies to help internal recruitment processes.

Questioning almost 150 employers, the survey found that the main reasons behind the failure to use succession planning were: it was not a business priority; their organisation lacked the resources or HR expertise needed to run the process; staff turnover was low and the size or nature of the workforce made it irrelevant. Responding to the survey, TMS Asia Pacific CEO Andrew

Chan said that a well-planned succession strategy can play a pivotal role in retaining and developing key staff.

"The trick in creating a successful strategy is to recognise what a company needs to do in the event it does lose key employees and combine that with the aspirations and ambitions of employees further down the line," he said. "Canny management, which has implemented succession planning strategies, has managed to recognise those employees best suited to advancement and who can immediately step into exiting colleague's shoes, are those who will, ultimately, stay ahead of the game. "In this way, not only does management improve employee commitment and retention, it also meets the career development expectations of existing employees."

Paul Gollan associate professor and director of research, Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, told Human Capital that employers have traditionally been quite poor at implementing succession strategies. "We're slowly getting there, but in the past we haven't taken succession planning seriously. But I don't call it just succession; I call it leadership, because I don't think it's just about one person," he said.

"I think traditionally we've never really paid much attention to management or leadership.... We've had limited access to really decent management education, that's only happened in the last 20 years or so. That's changing and changing quite radically. But we're still in a leftover state to a certain extent - only in the last 5-10 years with the far more globalised environment, higher levels of education and so forth, are we starting to focus on leadership." Dan Hammond, managing consultant LIW3, told Human Capital that he believes succession planning is something of an out-moded concept.

"I think succession planning itself is problematic these days because that suggests a very linear, old fashioned approach. It used to be a ladder - 'you're going to be me next so you've got to figure out how you'll move into this role'. But the longevity of roles is so short now that the job you're preparing yourself for may not even exist in three years," he said. "Succession planning is almost not a suitable model for today, whereas a more dispersed view of this - 'how can I build a bench of versatile leaders in the organisation that's going to adapt to different situations, one of which might be to do my job, or one of which might be to do another role in the event of being sold or bought or whatever'.

"I don't think there's enough stability these days to be able to place those bets but there's an opportunity now to be more general - it's from the ladder to the lattice. It's not step, step, step -rather [it's about] creating this strong network of leaders."