Succession Management Plan: Skills and Competencies

The succession management plan outlines the activities and priorities for training potential candidates for occupying strategically important jobs within the Nike Company. An environmental scan for the enterprise has shown the tendencies of frequently changing customer preferences in choosing sports gear depending on trends, socio-economic status, and technological opportunities to access goods.

These issues are relevant for both sporting gear industry in general, and Nike in particular. SWOT analysis has shown that the main opportunity for the company’s growth is the improvement of customer needs’ analysis that might facilitate the scope of employment opportunities.

Therefore, the company needs to expand the group of employees working with company performance planning based on analysis of social and cultural trends and economic environment in target regions to adhere its performance to the requirements of the market. Technological advancement is another opportunity identified during SWOT analysis. The priority of these areas derives from the company’s business goals to “bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete1 in the world” (“Purpose Moves Us 3). Therefore, the identified jobs crucial for the company’s development now include advertising manager, marketing manager, and e-business manager.

Skills and Competencies

As a kind of internal recruitment, succession planning requires identifying the employees with the highest potential to occupy responsible higher-level positions due to their skills, competencies, and successful development. The key group defined in the process of human resource planning for the Nike Company is advertising, marketing, and public relations managers (Government of Canada). Accordingly, three jobs are addressed in succession planning, two of which (e-business manager and advertising manager) will be located in Canada, and one (marketing manager) will be located outside of North America. The descriptions of the jobs with the identification of their accountabilities are presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Each of these three jobs requires specific core, role-specific, and person-specific competencies and skills. The candidates for these succession positions are expected to have them and display a readiness to train and develop those lacking. Since the three jobs exist within the same category of occupations constituting the same key group, several core competencies are thought to be of the same level of importance for each. The main competencies for the positions are presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Process of Selecting High-Potentials as Possible Successors

Nike performs according to the lean management framework when executing its work inside the company. This approach prioritizes the establishment of highly agile human resource management techniques that are capable of identifying the best employees (“Strengthening Human Resources Management”). In such a manner, the human resource department of the enterprise monitors the quality of each employee’s performance to carry out successful succession planning for the benefits of the business.

The process of selecting high-potentials as possible successors start with the identification of several individuals for each job. They might be identified on the basis of their key performance indicators from both long- and short-term perspectives. Their potential for further development and readiness to occupy the intended jobs are estimated and compared (See Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Once several candidates are chosen for each position, and their potential and readiness are properly assessed and compared, the program of training and development aimed at facilitating their skills and competencies is initiated.

Training and Development Activities

The company strives to ensure the development of talent in their employees by initiating training sessions to benefit candidates’ learning opportunities. According to Cavanaugh, every company builds up its human resources potential based on the available talent by fostering the development inside the company (23). Indeed, to ensure the personal growth of each employee within the framework of the company’s development, a business entity needs to invest significant assets in the form of effort, time, and funding. In such a manner, a company has an opportunity to retain its best employees and benefit from its contribution to its strategic advancement toward achieving business goals. As Karim et al. state, “the competitive advantages of the firm depend on the knowledge and skills possessed by the employees” (25).

All these issues apply to Nike’s succession planning when tackling the strategic directions toward better customer preference recognition through major factors analysis and its application to the company’s performance. Training and development are executed via activities aimed at fostering the improvement of certain skills and competencies. Several such activities are demonstrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4.

Monitoring Steps Outline

During the course of executing training and developing plans, the success of the planned activities needs to be controlled so that necessary adjustments may be implemented if necessary. For that matter, an outlined monitoring system is provided to incorporate such variables as particular activities, their completion, participants expected to be engaged in the activities and the place of practice. Following the monitoring steps, the facilitator can observe how effectively the training and development program is followed.

According to Mihalcea, “employees must be evaluated based on the results they achieve (current productivity) and on the competencies and behaviors they demonstrate” (293). Thus, when evaluating the success of the candidates upon program completions, HR metrics within two levels, including effectiveness and activity-based, will be applied. It will allow for comparing job-related outcomes before and after the program, as well as estimating the skill-based readiness of the potentials for executing their roles.

Summary

In conclusion, the succession plan for Nike is designed to identify the best internally available potentials for occupying strategically important positions of advertising manager and e-business manager in Canada and marketing manager outside North America. Three candidates per each of the three jobs are allocated based on their potential and readiness to start working at the new positions. Within the training and development plans, specific strategies necessary for facilitating skills for each job are developed. The participants are expected to adhere to the plan and will be monitored according to the outline.

Their performance and achievements will be evaluated as per effectiveness and activity-based performance so that the best candidates can be allocated to take the positions. When designing the succession plan, I managed to learn more about the importance of talent management. I applied critical thinking and planning skills to ensure that the chosen jobs and candidates are capable of contributing to the company’s strategic development at the moment.

Works Cited

Cavanaugh, John C. “Who will lead? The Success of Succession Planning.” Journal of Management Policy and Practice, vol. 18, no. 2, 2017, pp. 22-27.

Government of Canada. “0124 – Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations Managers.” 2016. Web.

Karim, Mobarak, et al. “The Impact of Training and Development on Employees’ Performance: An Analysis of Quantitative Data.” Noble International Journal of Business and Management Research, vol. 3, no. 2, 2019, pp. 25-33.

Mihalcea, Alina. “Employer Branding and Talent Management in the Digital Age.” Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, vol. 5, no. 2, 2017. pp. 289-306.

“Purpose Moves Us”. Nike Inc. Web.

“Strengthening Human Resources Management.” Purpose Nike. Web.