Linking Succession Planning with Current and Future Biz Needs: Jill Zimmerman at Corporate U Week

My live blogged notes from morning session at Corporate University week.

Linking Succession Planning with Current and Future Business Needs – Talent Review Process Excellence

Jill Zimmerman
Vice President of Talent Acquisition and Development, Human Resources
Discover Financial Services

About Discover

• Discover = started in 1986; leading credit card issuer, over 50 million card members; also in personal lending and direct banking.
• Vision: “To the be the most rewarding relationship consumers and business have with a financial services company.”
• Mission: to help people achieve better financial future

Succession Planning

• Process
• Tools
• Key success factors

Key success factor #1: always start with a bus strategy. Proactively build a robust talent pipeline to meet future bus and succession needs.

Key success factor #2: keep both the job and the people in mind. Do we have the right jobs to meet the needs? Do we have the right people?

Key success factor #3: use a common set of metrics. At Discover, set of leadership behaviors that apply to everyone at the company. 

9 box…

Have a job scorecard – what skills are required for a job? what leadership skills are required for that job? do you have a successor for that job? is there backfill for that successor? (if there’s not a deep bench, you may have to go outside the company).

Have a people scorecard (focus on the people) – create an accurate depiction of the people. What business skills? What leaderhip skills? What do we need to do with this person? identify individual gaps.

 

Key success factor #4: development must be on-going.

70/20/10 model:

• 70% experiential – things people can practice and do on the job
• 20% learn from others – mentors, coaches, managers, role models
• 10% learn on own – classes, articles, books

People usually identify that 10% – but we need to get better at identifying the 70%

Key success #5: CEO/COO must be active owners

Ongoing mindset; dedicated time; trusting and transparent discussion; accountability

Create a Candidate Slate

How will you know if you’re successful?

• Retention
• Engagement
• Internal Mobility

When people feel there’s opportunity, movement and growth – they’re more engaged. (They do anonymous surveys that is tied back to other data so they can see who’s staying, who’s transferred and who’s more engaged).

Retain and engage your most critical resources.

What are people good at? What are they interested in? What business needs can they meet?

Have done exit surveys – 3 years ago #1 reason people were leaving was internal mobility. Today’s it’s other reasons like relocation…