Polk County faces the potential retirement of up to 2/3 of its leadership team within the next 5 years – a significant challenge calling for a bold response.  The County’s office of Organization and Employee Development developed a Succession Planning Program (SPP) to identify potential candidates for positions considered critical to organizational success, and to assure each candidate has targeted, individual development plans to prepare them to be viable candidates for future vacancies.  

Nearly 70% of state and local government employees are defined as “knowledge workers,” or employees who require specialized education, training, or skills.  This number is significantly higher than in private industry, where these employees comprise only 30% of the workforce.  Therefore, the loss of institutional knowledge with departure of key people represents an even greater concern for government entities.  In short, critical leaders and the valuable experience they possessed were poised to leave the organization.

Faced with an inevitable leadership shortage and the lack of a process to identify and develop leadership candidates internally, the organization needed an immediate, proactive solution to effectively meet the challenges presented by the upcoming and inevitable loss of key staff and institutional knowledge.  
The OED staff together with executive management developed the Succession Planning Program (SPP).