Who will take their place?

By Wendy Soderburg

Campus administrators, speaking recently as part of a panel to discuss the potential loss of hundreds of retirement-eligible managers over the next five to 10 years, voiced warnings about the looming problem: It will happen. Be prepared.

The panelists who gathered at the Faculty Center on May 1 for the Administrative Management Group's program on "Succession Planning" hailed from different parts of campus: the College of Letters and Science, the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS), Healthcare, and External Affairs. All agreed that the need for succession planning — the process of identifying and preparing suitable employees to replace key leaders as they leave the university — is not urgent, but it is imminent.

"Demographers tell us that within the next 20 years, 78 million Americans will retire. That is a unique challenge, because the generation that follows them is half that size," said panel moderator Robert Gibson, director of training and development for Campus Human Resources. "So what's predicted is that we're going to have a talent shortage, particularly in the middle management ranks."

In preparing for this eventuality, the regents in 2005 mandated that all UC campuses submit a plan for workplace strategies. UCLA's plan, Gibson said, involves "succession through development," in which department heads will be encouraged to combine external recruitments with a renewed focus on internal development.

The College doesn't have a formal succession plan, said panelist Debra Dralle, director of staff personnel, but it has begun to view its practices more strategically, particularly in the areas of compensation and retention.

"If you're going to pay people to stay in the same position, as opposed to moving them to another position where they're going to get the kinds of skills that allow them to advance, you're basically putting a big roadblock in the way of someone trying to move on," she said. "And moving on is what you need to do if you're going to encourage career development." As a result, Dralle has greatly reduced the number of retention offers she makes to staff.

Rosemary Chavoya, assistant dean of administration for GSE&IS, agreed with Dralle, saying that sometimes department heads just have to bite the bullet. When you have employees who are really good at something, they're going to leave their jobs, she said. "And that's OK. The more you help them to develop, the more you help them to see themselves as the next leader."

She urged managers to feel good about spending money on staff development. "Be proud of it," she said. "Report on it: ‘I committed to X amount of dollars in my budget for staff training.' That's important."

Maure Gardner, director of labor relations and compensation for Healthcare Human Resources, explained that her department doesn't identify individuals to promote into certain management positions. Instead, she said, they have created a culture of learning opportunities for their 120 managers, with a series of lectures, seminars, workshops and mentorships. A program called "Talent Plus" assesses the non-tangible skills of their managers and evaluates how these skills apply to their positions.

For External Affairs' 550 employees, Assistant Vice Chancellor Peter Hayashida tries to keep a happy balance between those who love what they do and aren't looking for job growth, and those with ambitions to become the next vice chancellor, CAO or MSO.

"We're in the middle of an engagement survey process that asks our employees about the ways in which they feel connected to us as a department and as a university," Hayashida said. "We're hoping to get some valuable data that will serve as the impetus for discussions between managers and teams that think broadly about careers.

"As my colleagues have said, succession planning isn't about one person for one job. It is thinking about careers in a less linear fashion, thinking about professional development and transferable skills," Hayashida said.