Succession Hub App Overview

Succession Hub

1. What it is

Succession Hub identifies the roles your organization cannot afford to leave vacant and tracks who is ready to fill them. It combines critical-role identification, candidate readiness scoring, leadership assessments, and development programs into one view so HR and leadership teams can close pipeline gaps before they become vacancies.

• Enablement: Succession Hub requires a license. An admin enables it from the Apps Marketplace; it is off by default.
• What it is not: Succession Hub does not replace Performance Management. Performance ratings can feed into readiness scores via the integration settings, but reviews, goals, and competency evaluations are authored in Performance Management — Succession Hub reads that data, it does not own it.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Apps Marketplace and enable Succession Hub. The app is licensed and opt-in per tenant.
2. Go to Succession Hub → Settings and confirm the core modules are on. Five modules are enabled by default: Leadership Pipeline, Succession Planning, Leadership Assessment, Executive Dashboard, and Development Tracking. Three additional modules — Advanced Analytics, Board Reporting, and Transition Planning — are off and can be turned on here.
3. Create at least one Critical Role under the Succession tab. A critical role defines a position the organization must have succession coverage for. Set its urgency level and, optionally, assign the current incumbent and required competencies.
4. Add Succession Candidates to that role. Each candidate receives a readiness level — Ready Now, Ready in 1 Year, Ready in 2 Years, Ready in 3 Years, or Development Needed — and a rank. The plan requires at least 2 successors by default.
5. Optionally, set up Competency Frameworks and Assessment Templates under Settings → Templates to standardize how candidates are evaluated.
6. Configure who can access the succession pipeline under Settings. By default, only admins and app admins can manage succession data. You can widen this to include specific groups using the capability picker.
7. Confirm it worked: managers and HR users should see the Overview dashboard with critical-role counts, candidate totals, and a readiness score. Employees see only their own My Profile page.
8. Optionally, configure Notification Settings under Settings → Notifications. Assessment-due reminders, coverage-gap alerts, and review notifications are on by default. Assign recipient groups to control who receives each notification type.

Silent-until-paired: a critical role with no succession candidates produces a coverage-gap alert but contributes nothing to bench-strength metrics. The role and at least one candidate must exist together before the dashboard reflects meaningful data.

Mobile view: employees on mobile devices are automatically redirected to the mobile Succession Hub. The mobile view shows their candidacies, assessments, development activities, and high-potential status. Managers and admins stay on the desktop view.

3. How it fits together

Critical Roles vs. Succession Plans. These are the two structures users most often confuse. A critical role identifies a position — its title, department, urgency, and current incumbent. A succession plan defines the planning wrapper — review cadence, timeline, minimum successors, and the list of candidates. When you click View Succession Plan on a critical role, the app links them automatically (creating the plan if one does not exist). You can also create a standalone succession plan for a role that is not yet flagged as critical.

Example: VP of Engineering (Critical Role, urgency High, incumbent: Jane Doe) → linked Succession Plan (review cadence Quarterly, minimum successors 2, timeline 1 Year) → 3 candidates ranked 1–3 with readiness levels ranging from Ready Now to Ready in 2 Years.

Readiness levels describe how soon a candidate could step into the target role. The five levels are Ready Now, Ready in 1 Year, Ready in 2 Years, Ready in 3 Years, and Development Needed. Readiness feeds the bench-strength dashboard and the succession-coverage analytics. A plan is considered succession-ready when it has at least as many ready candidates as its minimum-successors requirement (default: 2).

High-Potential Employees are tracked separately from succession candidates. A high-potential record captures an employee’s potential level — Top Talent, High Potential, or Emerging Talent — along with a retention-risk score and flight-risk flag. The same employee can appear as both a high-potential and a succession candidate. These are complementary: high-potential identification is about the person’s growth trajectory; candidacy is about their fit for a specific role.

Leadership Assessments score an employee on competencies relevant to a role or leadership track. There are 11 assessment types, including 360° Feedback, Leadership Competency, Potential Assessment, and Succession Readiness. Each type has its own competency set. Competency scores are on a 0–100 scale; the overall score is the average across all competencies rated. Assessments are considered current for 6 months.

Development Programs track leadership-development activities such as internal programs, external programs, executive coaching, mentorship, and job rotations. Participants are enrolled, tracked through completion, and rated. Programs appear on candidate profiles so reviewers can see what development has already been invested.

Competency Frameworks define the leadership competencies used across assessments and role requirements. The app ships with a default Standard Leadership Competencies framework (Strategic Thinking, Communication, Team Leadership, Decision Making, Change Management, Emotional Intelligence, Problem Solving, Coaching & Development). Admins can create additional frameworks — for example, a Technical Leadership framework — under Settings → Templates.

Three access tiers. Succession Hub enforces three levels of access:

• Function tier (admin, app admin, HR Manager role, or Succession Planner role): sees all succession data across the organization. Can create, edit, and delete plans, roles, candidates, assessments, and programs.
• Manager tier (any manager who is not in the function tier): read-only access to the high-potential, assessment, and candidacy records of their own direct reports. Cannot see the Succession, Development, or Analytics tabs. No org-wide counts are shown.
• Employee tier (everyone else): sees only My Profile — their own candidacies, assessments, high-potential status, and development programs.

Integrations with other apps. Succession Hub reads data live from Performance Management (ratings, goals, competency scores), OKR Hub (OKR progress), Skill Swap (skill progress), and Recognition (awards and leadership recognition data). These integrations are display-only — controlled by toggle settings under Settings → Integrations — and require no sync configuration. Each integration is independent: enabling one does not require any other.

4. Running it

Reviewing the dashboard

The Overview tab shows a summary dashboard: total critical roles, succession candidates, high-potential employees, active development programs, recent assessments, and a succession readiness score. It also lists recent activity (assessments completed, program enrollments) and upcoming succession reviews. Critical roles needing attention — those without a Ready Now candidate — are highlighted.

Reviewing bench strength

Go to Analytics → Bench Strength. The page shows an aggregate readiness summary across all candidates, uncovered roles (fewer than 2 ready candidates), readiness by department, and a bench-strength score. Use this before leadership reviews to identify where the pipeline is thin.

Running a talent review

Go to Talent → Talent Reviews. Search for employees and add up to 4 to a side-by-side comparison. Optionally select a target critical role to score candidates against its required competencies. The comparison view shows flight-risk status and retention-risk scores, which requires a step-up re-authentication because it is sensitive data.

Conducting a leadership assessment

Go to Development → Assessments → New Assessment. Select the employee, assessment type, and source (Internal, External, Self, Manager, or Peer). Rate each competency on a 0–100 scale. The overall score is calculated automatically as the average. Completed assessments link to the employee’s high-potential record if one exists.

Managing succession reviews

Go to Succession → Reviews. Create a review with a type — Quarterly, Annual, Board Review, Ad Hoc, or Emergency — a date, and a conductor. Reviews track findings, recommendations, and action items. Use them to document the outcome of leadership-team discussions about the pipeline.

Managing transitions

Enable the Transition Planning module in Settings. Go to Succession → Transitions to create a transition record for a critical role. A transition tracks the outgoing and incoming employees, type (Planned, Emergency, Promotion, or Lateral Move), milestones, knowledge-transfer plan, and communication plan.

Using the 9-Box Matrix

Go to Analytics → 9-Box Matrix. The matrix plots candidates on a performance-vs-potential grid. Use it during talent calibration sessions to align on who is ready now, who needs development, and who is misplaced. You can filter by department or target role.

Viewing succession coverage

Go to Analytics → Coverage. The coverage view shows which critical roles have enough ready candidates and which do not. The succession readiness score is the percentage of active critical roles that have at least one Ready Now candidate.

Enrolling employees in development programs

Go to Development → Programs and open a program. Use Enroll to add participants. Track their status (Enrolled, Active, Completed) and record completion dates and ratings. The program’s completion rate and effectiveness rating update automatically as participants finish.

Exporting reports

The analytics and talent-pipeline pages offer CSV and PDF exports. Reports include succession-planning metrics, risk analysis, high-potential distribution by department, and development-program effectiveness.

5. Settings

Settings are at Succession Hub → Settings. Admin, app admin, or the Succession Admin role is required.

Setting	Where	Default	What it changes
Enable Succession Agent	Settings	On	Turns the AI agent on or off for this app
Leadership Pipeline	Settings (Modules)	On	Enables the high-potential identification features
Succession Planning	Settings (Modules)	On	Enables succession plans and critical roles
Leadership Assessment	Settings (Modules)	On	Enables leadership assessments
Executive Dashboard	Settings (Modules)	On	Enables the executive-level succession dashboard
Development Tracking	Settings (Modules)	On	Enables development programs and activities
Advanced Analytics	Settings (Modules)	Off	Enables pipeline-health analytics and the employee-facing Pipeline Health page
Board Reporting	Settings (Modules)	Off	Enables board-level succession reports
Transition Planning	Settings (Modules)	Off	Enables the Transitions section under the Succession tab
Who can access the succession pipeline	Settings	App Admins only	Controls who can manage succession data beyond admin and app admin. Accepts specific groups
Show Performance Ratings	Settings → Integrations	On	Displays Performance Management ratings on candidate profiles
Show Goals	Settings → Integrations	On	Displays goal data from Performance Management
Show OKR Progress	Settings → Integrations	On	Displays OKR Hub progress data
Show Skill Progress	Settings → Integrations	On	Displays Skill Swap progress data
Show Recognition Data	Settings → Integrations	On	Displays Recognition data on candidate profiles

Integration settings control which data from other enabled apps is displayed on Succession Hub profiles. They do not sync or copy data — Succession Hub reads it live from the shared database.

Admins can also export and import the full module configuration as JSON, or reset all modules to defaults, from the main Settings page.

6. More help

• Succession Hub FAQ — specific setup and operating questions
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Succession Hub from these articles. It can look up pipeline coverage, candidate readiness, and plan status.