
Succession planning is about identifying the essential skills and positions needed for your organization. You will also discover areas of weakness and opportunities to attract talent. It is possible to identify talent from outside and devise strategies to recruit for these positions. You might partner with other organizations, for example, to recruit people with essential or critical skills.
Assessment of talent pool
A company's future success depends on its ability to evaluate the talent pool. It helps identify key competencies and responsibilities and helps allocate these people to different positions in the organization. Assessment can be done internally or externally. There are several ways to evaluate talent pool.
Assessing the talent pool to support succession planning starts with defining the employees who will be affected by succession planning. This can include pay plans, occupational series, grade level and location. This can be done by surveying employees or through management definitions.

Identifying key positions
The process of succession planning begins with the identification of key positions. These are the positions that have high levels of decision making authority and specialized responsibilities that influence organizational success. These positions can be either managerial or individual contributor roles. These key leadership positions have a significant impact on the achievement and attainment of operational and strategic goals. It takes careful analysis of the workforce to identify key positions. This can be done using the State of California Workforce Planning Model.
When deciding on the top candidates for key positions in your organization's hierarchy, it is important that you consider their personality and ability. Although it's natural that you want to promote highly visible employees it is also important not to overlook their performance. It is easy to overlook those who do a great job behind the scenes. This can have a significant impact on your company's bottom line.
Develop talent pool
Developing a talent pool is an important step in succession planning. It allows companies to align their workforce needs with corporate visions, create competencies around skills groups, and conduct talent assessment to identify gaps in skill and experience. An organization's retention rate can be increased by having a talent pool.
Talent pools can be filled internally or externally, depending on the organizational needs and the skills of existing employees. An internal talent bank can help organizations increase their retention rate, decrease training time, and cut down on costs for recruitment. It is not a foolproof strategy and you need to be aware of some things before making a decision.

Implementation of Individual Development Plans (IDPs), with the talent pool
Implementation of individual development plans (IDP) with talent pool is a key component of succession planning. These plans help to evaluate the readiness of employees in their current roles and determine their long-term career objectives. An IDP can help organizations understand the skills required to grow their talent pool.
Modern organizations are dependent on talent management. This study explores the role of talent in succession planning.