What is Succession Management?
Oracle Fusion’s Succession Management assists you in identifying future replacements for important roles. With Oracle Fusion Succession Management, business users can pinpoint individuals prepared to take on roles before they become vacant, ensuring a seamless transition.
You can establish a succession plan for a job, position, or person (incumbent). Creating a succession plan is a straightforward setup. As a consultant, you’ll only need to manage a few pre-defined choices, while the HR Specialist/Manager handles the rest of the process.
Benefits of using succession plans
- Ensure a smooth transition to key jobs and positions.
- Identify employees who are ready now, or who could be ready in sometime after providing necessary support to them for jobs and positions that are likely to become vacant.
- Plan the career development of candidates.
Succession Plan Types
Your succession plan could be only one from these three types
- Incumbent : This type of the succession plan is setup against a key worker or a particular individual from the organization such as CEO.
- Job : This type of succession plan is setup against a specific job from your organization which has already been configured and workers are assigned. For example Senior Sales Manager
- Position : We can setup succession plan for a specific position also. In fusion a position is a specific instance of a job within a Business Unit (BU).
Note : Before you proceed with succession plan configuration we assume you have basic understanding for talent pool concept, if not, we recommend to quickly go through this article and create at least one talent pool which you can use in succession plan, it won’t take much time » Learn All About Oracle Fusion Cloud Talent Pool
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Learn to Configure Succession Plan
Arguably succession management is one of the simplest module in oracle cloud application that doesn’t require any pre-configuration to use the module. To create a succession plan, please follow below navigation.
Navigation : My Client Groups » Succession Plans
You will be on Succession Overview page, which shows all active plans already configured. To create a new succession plan, click on Add button.
You are on Create Succession Plan page. Configuration of a succession plan is divided into following four sections, which we will cover one by one. You can also configure guided journey for each of these sections, which will be helpful for HR specialist while creating a succession plan.
- Plan Info
- Candidates
- Owners
- Alerts
Configure Plan Info section
In this section we enter basic details about the succession plan that we are going to configure, such as name of the plan and type of the plan. Enter details as follows
-
- Name : AP Patels Successor Plan
- Private : Keep it selected
- Status : Active
- Description : This plan is to prepare successor for Mr. Patel
- Plan Type : Incumbent
- Incumbent : Select the person from the list for who you are looking successors.
When you make a plan Private you will have access of this plan along with other owners of the plan that we define in the Owners section later in this plan configuration.
We have already explained earlier that there are three different succession plan types. In this article we have selected Incumbent type, which means we are trying to find successors for an individual. If we select this plan type, we also need to mention who is that person in the incumbent field. If we select other plan types such as job or position, our intention through the succession plan is to find suitable candidates who would be right fit for those jobs or positions if there is any vacancy.
Identify candidates for the succession plan
Move on to the Candidates section. This is the section where you identify who could potentially replace the person identified in the plan info section. In the succession management terminology, these potential persons are called candidates but they are not your candidates from oracle recruiting clouds but they are actual workers who are already hired and already working in your organization.
Click on the Add button and it will bring down following four options
- Internal Candidates : If you select this option, system will allow you to search active workers from your oracle cloud application.
- External Candidates : If you select this option, you won’t be able to search any existing workers nor the candidates from your recruiting cloud then what is this for? Here concept is slightly different. Assume that you are creating a succession plan for your CEO and you have identified some potential workers from within the organization who could replace your CEO, but you are still not satisficed with the succession plan. You come to know about me, Avinash Patel, and think that I could be the best replacement for your CEO, you can create my record in your oracle cloud application as external candidate (without hiring me) and attach it to your succession plan. Later in this article in the Create External Candidate for Succession Plan section you will know how to create external candidates before adding them to the succession plan.
- Best-fit Candidates : You can identify potential candidate using system inbuilt analysis, which is said to be based on AI (Artificial Intelligence). However, this works only if you have configured model profile and attached competencies with them.
- Talent Pool Members : You can also select candidates from any existing talent pools you have configured earlier.
We will see all these options one by one so dont worry much, you are not going to miss anything.
Identify Internal candidates for succession plan
Click on the Add button and select option Internal Candidate and enter details as follows.
-
- Name : Search and select a person who would be a potential replacement.
- Status : Active
- Interim Successor : Select yes. You can select multiple candidates as interim successor there is no system validation.
- Readiness : Click on the field and following options will be displayed. These values are coming from an extension lookup type HRM_READINESS_CATEGORY. You can update the Readiness Category lookup to modify the list of values. Through this filed you tell when would this candidate be ready to replace the key person. For this exercise select option Less than one year.
- Ready Now
- Less than one year
- 1 to 2 years readiness
- 3 to 4 years readiness
- No readiness available
- Ranking : You optionally assign ranking to the candidate. Again same ranking can be assigned to multiple candidates, there is no validation. For this exercise enter value 1.
Click on OK button. Perform steps mentioned above to add few more internal candidates.
When you add any candidate to your succession plan and if that person is part of any other succession plan that you own, you get notified by the field Other accessible plans and the count of number of succession plan that candidate is part of. This is not an issue but good to know for a plan owner.
Add succession plan candidates to a talent pool
Hope you have added couple of internal candidates to your plan by now. Succession plan seamlessly integrates with Talent Pool. Once you finalize your candidates for a succession plan, you can optionally create a Talent Pool and add all those candidates into a talent pool.
There is a checkbox in front of all candidates. Click on that for the first two candidates and you will notice that Add to Talent Pool button is activated.
Click on that button – Add to Talent Pool. It will ask you to select a talent pool name to which you want to assign these candidates. Once you select the plan click on Save and Close button.
Add Internal candidates from talent pools
This is just the reverse of previous step, system also gives you option to add members from any existing talent pools to your succession plan.
- Click on the Add button and then select option Talent Pool Members.
- Select the talent pool name from the field Pool Name and scroll below to Members section.
- Click on the checkbox against members you want to add to succession plan.
- Scroll up and click o Add button.
You are back to Create Succession Plan page with few additional candidates for your succession plans.
Add Internal candidates using Best-fit analysis
Click on the Add button again and select option Best-Fit candidates. In the Model Profile filed you will notice a value already pre-populated. This is the mode profile associated with the job/position of the person we are looking replacement. System does give option to change it, if you need to. This is really critical as all the analysis would be based on this model profile. Click on the Continue button. On the Find Best Fit Person page you will notice a Find Best Fit button. When you click this, the system will search for people in the results section whose job-related competencies closely match the profile of the person we’re replacing, based on the following contents.
- Competencies
- Honors and awards
- Work requirements
- Languages
- Degrees
- Memberships
- Licenses and certifications
Hope you have got a fair idea about the option that is available to select candidates using Best-Fit analysis option. For now click on the Cancel button to come back to Create Succession Plan page.
Add owners to the succession plan
We have added handful of candidates to our plan, let’s scroll further to Owners section. If you expand owners section you will find your name already present there. There is also an edit (pencil) icon, click on that against your name. You will notice that Owner type set to Administrator. Click on that field and you will find following options
- Viewer : This type of owner can only view succession plan but cant update anything. Its like a read-only access of the plan. They can’t even receive alert notification for the plan.
- Candidate Manager : This will give owner access to manage candidates of the plan. They can change the readiness category, raking, add or remove candidates etc. But they can’t update anything else other than candidates section. For example, they cant add or remove owners, they cant change status of the plan etc.
- Administrator : This gives full access of the plan.
There is another filed Send Alerts. This basically tells if this user wants to receive any alerts or not. What is that all alert about is discussed in the next section. For now change the value to Yes, for your user and then click on OK button.
To add additional owners, apart from you, click on the Add button and enter following details
- Owner : Select a person from the list.
- Owner Type : Candidate Manager
- Send Alerts : Yes
Click on OK button.
Click on Add button again and add another owner of type Viewer and notice the you cant enable alerts for this owner type.
Configure Alerts for Succession Plan
This is the last section of succession plan configuration steps. Expand this section and click on Edit button. Enable all following notifications by clicking on the check boxes then finally click on OK button
- Send alerts when candidates move to the plan role
- Send alerts when candidates move to roles that are different from the plan role
- Send alerts when the incumbent changes roles
Just enabling the notifications from Alerts section will not start sending notifications, they also needs to be enabled in the Alerts Composer.
With this we are done with succession plan configuration. Scroll up and click on Save and Close button.
Create External Candidate for Succession Plan
To create an External Candidate navigate to My Clients Groups » Succession Plans on the Succession Overview page, scroll below to External Candidates section.
To create a new external candidate click on Add button and then enter details about the candidate on that page. Once done, click on Save button.
Manage Succession Plans
We have created a succession plane, we will also quickly see how we manage a succession plan. Before we proceed further, we assume that you have created an external candidate as mentioned in the previous step.
Note : In the previous step we added three owners to our succession plan and one of them was having candidate manager role. If possible, you log out and login as that person (but ensure he has Succession Plan Management duty role and necessary security profile to access succession plan overview page, otherwise you continue with user who has administrator role.)
To Manage a plan navigate to My Client Groups » Succession Plans
On this page, you only see plans you have access to or non-private plans. By defaults only Active plans are shown.
- Click on Show Filter link.
- Under the Plan type section select Incumbent.
- In the plan name filed enter AP Patels Successor Plan and click on search icon.
- Click on the plan name to open it.
- If you have logged in as user who only has candidate manager role, he can only edit candidates section and nothing else.
Add External candidate to Succession Plan
- Scroll below to Candidate section
- Click on Add button. Select option External Candidate.
- Search candidate you created previously
- Enter Readiness details
- Click on Save button
View Succession Plan History
As you can add multiple owners to a succession plan, which also means multiple people can access and update the plan. This sometime makes it difficult to audit who is updating what. But worry not, scroll up to the header section and click on View Plan History button.
Plan History page show three different sections, which are same as our succession plan sections as follows
- Plan Info
- Candidates
- Owners
You can see history for each section, what was changed and when by whom.
Click on back arrow button < to return to AP Patels Successor Plan page.
Add Workers directly to a Succession Plan
So far we have seen that whenever you want to add a candidate, you have to open our succession plan. But this is not always required. You can add any worker to any succession a plan which you have access to directly without opening it. There are several navigation for this, but let’s do it through person spot light page.
Navigation : Me » Directory » Search for any person » click on show more » Click on Succession Planning link from person spotlight.
You will see two different sections as follows
- Succession Plan : This shows if there is any succession plan created for this person or not. If you think this is a key resource and there should be a succession plan, click on the Add button and you will see Create Succession Plan page to create a plan for this person.
- Candidate in Plans : If you think this person could be a potential successor for any other person, you can click on the Add button and then select the plan you want him to add, for example : AP Patels Successor Plan
Configure Succession Management Readiness Category
To configure readiness category for succession plan, search for the lookup code HRM_READINESS_CATEGORY or follow below navigation to see all lookup codes relevant to succession management.
Navigation : Settings and Actions » Setup and Maintenance » Setup: Workforce Development » Functional Areas : Succession Management » Task : Succession Management Lookups
Click on the task name Succession Management Lookups and you will find following lookup codes
- HRM_READINESS_CATEGORY : This lookup holds what is the readiness status of a worker who is going to replace or fill the vacancy. You may like to store values like “No Ready”, “Ready in 1 year”, “Ready within 1 to 2 years”, “Not Ready” etc.
- HRM_SUCC_CAND_STATUS : Status of a succession worker such as Action or Inactive
- HRM_SUCC_PLAN_STATUS : Status of a succession plan such as Action or Inactive
- HRM_SUCC_PLAN_TYPE : Available plan types such as Job, Position and Incumbent
- HRM_PLAN_STRENGTH_CRITERIA : Used for plan strength criteria
Quick Recape
- Helps to determine who will eventually replace personnel currently in key positions
- Minimal Configuration, only lookups configuration is required
- Integrated with Talent Pools and Organization Chart
- Task “Succession Management Lookups” is used to setup lookups
- Can be created for Job, Position and Incumbent (Person)
- Plans can be either public or private
- Additional Owner can be added
- Candidate lists are restricted by security profile only who have apt security access to a candidate can see
Interview Questions on Succession Management
1. What would happen if you remove the readiness category lookup ?
If the values already being used for succession plan candidates or talent pool members, their readiness level will be changed to No readiness available. Plan or Pool would be able to change the category for affected candidates/members.
2. What’s succession plan strength?
A measure of the number of candidates in the plan and their relative readiness. Plan strength appears as a graphical summary on the Succession Plans tab of the Succession Plans work area.
3. What could be the reason if Best Fit analysis is disabled?
Please find the answer your own by reading the article above 🙂
Succession Management Questions
This article provides a comprehensive overview of all the essential aspects related to succession management. It encompasses a thorough understanding of the topic, leaving no stone unturned. If you find yourself with any inquiries or uncertainties, please don’t hesitate to share them on our partner platform, hcmfolks.com. This platform serves as an open community tailored for individuals like yourself who are connected to Oracle HCM. Feel free to engage, seek insights, and contribute to discussions in this community. Your questions and contributions are both valuable and welcomed.
Excellente!