Succession Planning for Security Departments

Survival of the fittest may work in the animal kingdom, but grooming the next generation of CSOs requires a substantial investment of time, a sincere interest in employee development and a dash of humility. Are you ready for succession planning?

However, timing can also work in a company's favor. Jim Christian, vice president and head of corporate security and aviation at Novartis, has had employees leave for a better opportunity with a competitor, and then three years later a position will open up and Novartis can lure that individual back. "A lot of it is timing; sometimes we have the person and not the position," says Christian.

Derrick Barton, cofounder of the Center for Talent Retention, suggests that CSOs who want to hold onto their best people should consider creating career opportunities rather than waiting for positions to open up. This can mean designing a special assignment for someone who wants to build his or her skills in a particular area of security. Thus, employees who are hungry for development can get it without necessarily being appointed to a new job. "Make it a role that the person can execute and be compensated for," says Barton. "There doesn't have to be a ton of hierarchy for something to be a career-opportunity trigger."

The simple act of letting a person know that she is well thought of is also important to employee retention. "I can't tell you how many high performers were delivering great work, but no one ever told them. They decide, 'I'm out of here,'" says Barton. "Once that happens, there's a very high correlation with those people actually leaving, and they will deliver high performance until the moment they walk into your office and say they're moving on." CSOs can't put off these discussions, or they will find their best replacement candidates slowly trickling out of the corporation.

On a positive note, one employment trend benefiting CSOs is that the decade of the freelance nation is over. Employees are no longer as interested in hopping from one company to another as they were in the '90s. The desire for stability, and the opportunity to build a career at a single company, is more valued at this point.Define the RoleWhen succession plans do exist, they are often based on the wrong criteria. Performance evaluations can identify talented people within your group, but they are records of an individual's past accomplishments. A good succession plan should be based on the skills and values that will define the CSO role in the future. The executive that has been a corporate superstar for the past 15 years is not necessarily the best-equipped leader for the challenges that are sure to arise in the next decade. CSOs who embark upon succession planning must first consider what the defining characteristics of the future security executive will be.