Best Practices, LLC undertook this research to assist a fast-growing pharmaceutical company seeking to understand how top companies create succession planning systems. Executives with the company which already had a succession planning process in place for senior management knew the growth pace was unsustainable without a plan for filling any gaps from attrition among mid-level and front-line employees. The client company retained Best Practices, LLC to uncover how the world's top companies dealt with this challenge then create a comprehensive guide to best practices in succession planning.
Analysts assessed practices across 35 companies known for their succession planning programs. The client report featured key findings from the benchmark class, best practices that highlight specific tactics, and profiles of career path definition and succession planning systems at companies identified as innovators in this area. The client company used these findings to determine improvement areas for its succession planning efforts then implemented several of the best practices detailed in the report. Today, the client company remains a perennial leader on rankings of the best places to work, including those done by Fortune and Working Mothers magazines.
This white paper includes a sample of practices from our work on succession planning.