Human Resource Assignment (READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS!!!)

Name

University

Succession Plan

The succession planning process is vital for the smooth running of an organization since it ensures that the vacated positions are occupied easily. The human resources department must liaise with all departments to ensure that the selected or trained people have the desired knowledge, skills, and abilities (Hall-Ellis, 2015). Most organizations employ graduate or management trainees programs to ensure that the people going through the program obtain the needed competencies. The training imparts leadership and practical skills crucial in transitioning management of an organization if one or more employees in the leadership roles vacate their positions. Moreover, some organizations have apprentice programs that impart practical skills to the trainees, thus making them capable of performing some duties. Although succession planning process is common in most organizations, this paper focuses on designing a training plan responsible for imparting the desired competencies to the maintenance crew.

Knowledge, skills, and abilities are the driving force for both the performance of the individual employee and the organization. The succession plan is only successful if the trained or selected individuals can perform in a specific position as desired. Therefore, the process seeks to ensure that the selected and trained employees have the necessary KSAs (Santora, Sarros, Bozer, Esposito, & Bassi, 2015). The employees will be selected and taken through the program for sixteen months. Although this is the set period for training, some trainees might be forced to extend if the supervisors contend that they did not obtain the needed KSAs. Since the program seeks to train maintenance crew, it will be under the maintenance engineering department. The HR department will collaborate with the maintenance department to select the desired employees through recruitment and train them for the specified period. Two selection criteria will be adopted for determining the KSAs. The first criterion will assist in the selection process, and the second criterion will be central in determining the success of the training. Below are the requirements for the criteria that will indicate acquisitions of the desired KSAs by the maintenance crew:

During the selection/ recruitment phase, the candidates need to fulfill the following requirements:

· Be a holder of a mechanical engineering degree from a recognized institution.

· Must have attained a second class upper degree or a GPA of greater than 3.5.

· Proficiency in Ms. Suite, i.e. Ms. Excel, Ms. Word, Ms. Outlook & MS Visio

· Proficient in engineering software tools: AutoCAD, SolidWorks

· Detail-oriented and analytical in nature

· Safety-oriented with ability to identify and report hazards.

· Possess “I can do” attitude.

· Getting things done with minimum or no supervision.

· Team leader

Training Criterion

After the training period, the candidate must have the KSAs to perform the following:

· Maximize the overall uptime of the processing and support equipment.

· Develop and maintain equipment repair KPI’s i.e. Mean time to repair (MTTR), Mean time before failure (MTBF), Availability etc.

· Every month, analyze the equipment’s failures in terms of repetitiveness, top ten failures by downtime duration, top ten failures by cost and recommend on corrective measures to be taken.

· In liaison with the maintenance supervisors, investigate the root cause of major equipment failures, and recommend the corrective measures to avoid any future occurrence.

· Check the various maintenance processes in place, identify any gaps to be sealed, and come up with the overall continuous improvement strategy.

· Perform critical analysis on the equipment to identify the various failure modes, identify the critical spares, and recommend on the preventive maintenance to be done.

· Advise the maintenance stores when receiving the purchased spares to avoid any foreseen quality issues which might reduce equipment uptime.

· Liaise with maintenance, operation, and support teams in the conduct of risk assessments for the various existing equipment, maintenance processes, and new equipment.

· Perform any other tasks assigned by the maintenance manager.

Retaining Successor

The success of the succession plan depends on the acquisition of the desired KSAs and retention of trained employees. In any case, the succession plan seeks to promote continued operations of an organization after the departure of the employees in the management or leadership positions (Santora et al., 2015). Therefore, a need exists to employ effective strategies to retain trained employees after the training period. One of the crucial strategies will be to assign the trainees roles in the management or leadership positions (Flynn, 2014). Such an undertaking will give the trainees a sense of growth and development, which remains the desire of any employee in an organization. However, the trainees will be required to sign contracts not less than three years to ascend to these positions. Additionally, the trainees will be awarded some benefits paid to the permanent employees, and their placement will be under senior managers that are likely to phase out in the nearest future. These retention strategies are likely to persuade the trainees to remain at the organization, thus fostering the success of the plan.

Employees with the necessary educational level will be selected and taken through the program for sixteen months. Upon the completion of the program, the trainees that pass the tests and prove themselves in leadership and maintenance roles will be assigned posts under varying managerial positions. Placing the employees in respective positions will give them the feeling that they could move up the ladder within a short time. Therefore, they are likely to remain at the organization.

Organizations initiate succession plans to guarantee continued operations even when senior employees vacate their positions. Most organizations employ graduate or management trainees programs to ensure that the people going through the program obtain the needed competencies. The succession plan is only successful if the trained or selected individuals can perform in a specific position as desired. Therefore, the process seeks to ensure that the selected and trained employees have the necessary KSAs. One of the crucial strategies to retain trained employees will be to assign them roles in the management or leadership positions. Such an undertaking will give the trainees a sense of growth and development, which remains the desire of any employee in an organization.

References

Flynn, D. J. (2014). Succession Planning: Are You Proactive or Reactive? Journal of Financial Planning, 27(11), 24.

Hall-Ellis, S. D. (2015). Succession planning and staff development–a winning combination. The Bottom Line, 28(3), 95-98. https://doi.org/10.1108/BL-05-2015-0007

Santora, J. C., Sarros, J. C., Bozer, G., Esposito, M., & Bassi, A. (2015). Nonprofit executive succession planning and organizational sustainability. The Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 20(4), 66-83. doi:10.9774/GLEAF.3709.2015.se.00006