The company doesn’t stop or even reduce other business risk planning (think financial risk management, IT data risk management, safety risk management), so why stop talent risk planning? Because that is what succession planning and development is…assessing talent risks and developing people to be prepared for the future and for new situations.
Obviously, some employees in some industries are working crazy hours in full-on crisis mode, and so trying to have them do training and development right now is not appropriate. But for other companies, there are employees who are not able to do some or all of their job functions, and so for them, this is a great time to work on development action plans.
Training might “look different right now” – consider virtual leadership book clubs (everyone reads the book and holds a virtual discussion), webinars, virtual project team work, e-learning, and 360 processes and executive coaching still works well virtually.
The virus situation may be creating new talent development challenges, such as providing “Leading Virtually” virtual workshops. And because it takes years to develop successors for some positions, it is important to continue to develop gaps in successor candidates so the organization is not caught off guard in the future.
Employee engagement never stops being important, no matter what the situation is, and so continuing to provide talent development resources for employees who are able to focus on that right now can enhance employee engagement.
