BANGALORE: Every year, Wipro chairman Azim Premji and the CEO of the company's IT business TK kurien block one week of their time to review succession slates in the company. The search is not restricted to front-line leaders who would occupy corner room positions; it runs deeper in the organization covering a large number of leaders across different business units.
Wipro's Talent Review and Succession Planning exercise assesses its leadership bench strength annually and makes sure there is a ready pool of successors to fill critical roles. "The talent review process gives us a leadership-level talent inventory and capability map that reflects the extent to which critical talent needs are fulfilled vis-a-vis business drivers. This process covers 600 senior leaders in the organization," said Saurabh Govil, global HR head for Wipro's IT business. The annual exercise is timed around the completion of the annual performance appraisal in May.
Many of the major IT companies have put in place, or are in the process of putting in place, succession plans for not just their top management executives, but also their leaderships at different levels. For US listed companies, CEO succession planning is now almost a mandate. In 2009, the Securities and exchange commission provided shareholders the right to demand more transparency in CEO succession planning.
Infosys Technologies put in place succession planning early last decade, when it identified some 400 potential leaders. Its Leadership Institute in Mysore has played a big role in training leaders. Over 800 employees have undergone the programme at this institute. Incidentally, Infosys even has an IT solution for succession planning called TalentEdge that helps organizations determine successors for employees who play critical roles.
Mid-sized IT firm Mind tree has initiated a leadership review process to identify 100 leaders in the company by 2015-16 . "In managing talent, it's either a make or buy decision. We are creating a leadership pipeline with 80% of talent requirement being groomed in-house , while we will acquire 20% externally ," said Ravi Shankar, chief people officer at MindTree. The company also focuses on succession mentoring where the CEO and chairman of the company spend 15-20 days in a year with the successors who have been identified.
HCL technologies has a well-defined succession plan for its top 30 managers including its CEO Vineet Nayar. Currently, the top three second-level leaders manage 30% of HCL's business and one of them could succeed Nayar. These include Rahul Singh, president of financial and business services , Anant Gupta, president of infrastructure services and Steve Cardell, president of enterprise application services.
Cognizant Technology solutions recently benchmarked the skills and competencies of 22 senior executives in India as part of its succession planning. "They will eventually play a larger role in the company, heading critical functions," said a source privy to the development. However,the company denied undertaking such an exercise.
Though companies are secretive about succession planning, they follow a rigorous process to get visibility into the company's leadership talent pool. "This assessment leads to an identification of short-term and long-term successors for each key role," said Govil. Wipro identifies three successors for each critical role.
MindTree follows a multi-tier assessment process to benchmark competencies of internal candidates under its Leadership Talent Review process. This includes peer reviews, mapping competencies by teams internally and by external consultants. "The successors are put through a nine-month structured leadership programme to prepare for critical openings. An action plan is drawn up with live projects to review the results and bridge the existing skills gaps. A personal coach is assigned to groom potential successors," Ravi Shankar said.
Edited By Cen Fox Post Team
