Only 38% firms have leadership succession plan in place: EY

Filling vacancies at the top is a significant challenge for the most of the companies and yet just 38 per cent of the firms seem to have a well-established leadership succession talent plan in place, says an EY report.
While, around 32 per cent of respondents plan to have a leadership succession talent process in place in the next one year, 13 per cent do not have any such plan at all, the report, 'Talent trends in India, 2015', said.
"Only 38 per cent of the companies surveyed have a well-established leadership succession talent process in place," it said.
The findings assume significance as filling vacancies at the top brass is a "significant challenge" for most companies.

According to the report, around 14 per cent of top management vacancies remain open for more than six months, while 75 per cent take longer than two months to fill.
On the contrary, three-fourths of all junior-and middle-level vacancies are filled within two months. This includes sales and related roles, as well as in operations.

Interestingly, there is a very low turnover at the top and senior management levels, which indicates that organisations are better at retaining employees at leadership levels than at junior and mid-level ones.
As per the survey, there is a high annual turnover of employees working in customer-facing roles, followed by internal production/operation areas.

On talent sourcing, the report said that 60 per cent of the employers surveyed plan to source talent via social networks, with 42 per cent are targeting recruitment from tier II and III cities.
Social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter have emerged as the main non-conventional methods of sourcing.
While, tier II and tier III cities, given their unique combination of low-cost and scalable talent pool have emerged as the second most popular non-conventional destinations for sourcing, the report said.