Hi All, We are looking to establish succession levels for every department to provide employees with a clear understanding of their growth opportunities within the organization. Need your inputs on how to proceed with this. Currently we have 5 broad departments (product/marketing/engineering/HR/FinOps) under each of them there are functions like in Engg. Data/QA/Backend etc.

Hi Neha, The Foundation to define Career Path / Succession Levels is a Job Evaluation Framework. Where each job is differentiated based on a significant value add that it does over the previous role. So have the roles defined (not designations), with clearly defined Value Adds that it does over its preceding role. And communicate it to employees the skills and exposure they will require to move to the next level. To enable this - also set up Training Programs and Projects that will enable employees to move to the next level in the career trajectory. You will also have to define different career paths - of being SMEs or People Managers, and different ways to achieve them.

@Neha Tyagi, I would actually suggest taking a more focused approach. 1. Identify some of the critical roles in each function you are targeting. (The critical roles can be based on multiple factors that calculate their value - it is not always necessary that senior roles will be more critical) 2. For each critical role, evaluate the behavioral and the technical competencies needed. (For example, to be a CFO, someone might need 'Business Acumen' as behavioral knowledge and 'Tax laws' as technical) 3. Identify proficiencies needed for each competency at each level. (For example, if there is a role of Accountant in Finance, it would be good for them to have 'Financial Acumen' but not at the same level of expertise as the CFO) 4. Evaluate the competencies and proficiencies of the people who you think can fit into the CFO role if the role is vacant. (The ideal way to identify these people would be using the process that @Ashish Vyas described - after identifying the job levels and the career trajectories) 5. Figure out what learning path each person will need to be succession ready and how much time they will take. 6. Pilot test the succession plan and after making adjustments, launch it to the wider world. I hope this helps, otherwise feel free to DM.

@Neha Tyagi Adding to aboveboard, please make sure of the budget for each roles (and benefits if these differ with levels). Also, there are usually 2 paths after a certain level - one as IC and other as team management.

Thanks for the inputs, I appreciate it🙏.