Building External Succession Plans

Succession Planning isn’t always a case of promoting within your business. External talent can play a major part in the future success and development of your organisation.

Recent global economic shocks have exposed the weaknesses in some leaders and in succession planning. Traditional leaders used to hierarchical structures or with autocratic leadership styles have failed to retain a strong company culture in the hybrid world. This has led many organisations to urgently review and renew their current and future leaders.

With only 34% of CEO’s believing that there is an adequate succession plan for their role, major organisations are pledging to do better and invest in succession planning strategies. Leadership risk and succession is persistently in the top 3 concerns for CHROs across the globe, and investment in building more robust pipelines of leaders is increasing exponentially.

How we help

Building External Succession Plans

Two-thirds of succession planning processes in larger organisations neglect the external market, meaning most are missing out on the next generation of talent. Are you?

At Armstrong Craven, we provide our clients with a detailed, birds-eye view of the whole talent market, bringing together internal and external data to give a complete picture of the landscape of potential talent for any leadership role.

The benefits of Building External Succession Plans

By ensuring you know exactly what talent exists for any role, you can be sure that your efforts to hire the best leaders are laser-focused.

Understanding the gender, ethnic and socio-economic mix of your potential future leaders allows you to focus diversity efforts on those roles where representation is strongest.

Building external succession plans reduces risk as you have an up to date view of potential talent and can significantly shorten hiring cycles, so mitigating the risk of having executive roles unfilled.

By having an external succession plan, when a key member of your senior team leaves, you no longer have to settle for the talent available - allowing your business to hire better talent when you need it most.

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Working alongside leading TA & HR professionals

General Electric
London Stock Exchange
BBC
abbvie
accenture
SAP
AngloAmerican
ASDA
AstraZeneca
avanade
babcock
Balfour Beatty
BANK OF AMERICA
Bloomberg
bp
Canon
Capita
EATON
facebook
GlaxoSmithKline
IMI
intuit
JnJ
Kelloggs
LOTUS
MARS Petcare
MERCK
mimecast
Pearson
Providence
Schneider Electric
serco
Specsavers
stryker
coop
vmware
vodafone
Our company has used Armstrong Craven for over 10 years to source high quality talent. As we work to ensure our talent management strategy supports our business strategy, we are increasingly using AC to provide customised insights to inform our mid- to long-term talent planning. Our needs vary but overall, the information we get from AC ensures we create an employment offering that ensures we attract and retain the high calibre people we need, when we need them.
Global Pharmaceutical Company Global Talent Business Lead
The business really appreciates your support. Your Insights capability accelerated our knowledge transfer. Without partnering with Armstrong Craven, it would have taken us a year to get to the same point in our understanding of the market.
Global Biotech Director, Global Talent Acquistition
Armstrong Craven was recommended to me by the Group HR head of a FTSE 250 company in the UK. We were provided with a set of very viable candidates in each of the assignments and they helped us through the difficult selection process, as the finalists in both cases were all quite exceptional.
Innovative UK Start-up Interim CEO
We are increasingly retaining Armstrong Craven for roles at the highest levels and can rely on them to deliver the same level of service as Executive search firms using a much better cost model to the standard starting salary percentage model.
Asda Head of Resourcing
We have used Armstrong Craven on a number of occasions now for executive research at the very highest levels and on each and every occasion they have helped us locate the right candidate, all of whom have gone on to make a fundamental contribution to the health and development of our businesses.
Liquid Plastics Ltd Managing Director
We are increasingly using Armstrong Craven rather than traditional search or head-hunters to support us with innovative, timely and cost effective sourcing of candidates. Armstrong Craven take a different approach to executive search and talent planning and are a great supplier for a business like us who is moving to direct sourcing.
AstraZeneca plc Global Recruitment Partner
Thanks for all your help in scouring the field for talent. I think the mapping and search worked out very well! I’d be happy to work with you again on similar talent needs.
Major Pharma Company SLT Member
We thank you for the excellent support and will definitely come back to AC for future pipelining.
Major Medical Devices Company Global VP HR
Spot on and thorough project, Great job, looking forward to reaching out to the individuals Really great, very happy, good to engage in more work including pipeline, search and mapping.
Major Pharma Company TA Head
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