Strategic Succession Planning in the context of the complete Talent Management Strategy at Franz Haniel & Cie.

Client Issue

Haniel is an internationally active enterprise with four business sectors: Celesio, CWS-boco, ELG and TAKKT. They are independent from each other in the commercial industry and active services and all in market leading positions. Furthermore, Haniel possesses 34.2 percent holdings in METRO AG. In 2008, the enterprise generated a turnover of 26.4 billion Euros. Contributing to Haniel’s success are around 50,000 employees, 40,000 of which are outside of Germany.

Corporate wide, the holding Franz Haniel & Cie. GmbH adopted the strategic and financial guidance and defined the Human Resources management’s objectives. AT the beginning of the project, the corporate HR team were facing the following challenges:

• Missing definitions of comparable leadership levels as well as key positions
• No uniform standards for the identification of top performing personnel
• A non-uniform corporate wide procedure for succession planning
• Missing transparency concerning corporate wide occupancy risks for lead and key positions.

The aim of the Talent Management Initiative was the reorientation of the subsequent and potential management such as the conception and implementation of integrated Talent Management instruments and a corresponding system image (SAP EhP4).

Method of Procedure

Corporate HR was supported by Promerit during all phases of the project; from the strategy development to the implementation:

Strategy Phase – Definition of the Talent Management Strategy: At the beginning of the project, the existing personnel development processes and tools were analyzed. Based upon the results, the reorientation of the relevant parts of the HR Strategy was developed. Centre stage was a consequent orienteering of key function sectors in the business group.

Phase 1 – Conception and Implementation of the Strategic Succession Planning in the Corporation: In this phase, the basic concept for the whole Talent Management Process was developed, from conversations with employees about the potential planning session to follow up conferences. The focal point was corporate wide succession planning at the highest leadership positions. Based on a uniform competency model, the assessment process for senior management was drawn up and implemented.

For the corporate follow up conferences, two supplementary succession planning methods were taken into account.  In addition, further details and values were developed, which contained executive committee-relevant elements of a strategic personnel planning. The definition of the strategically relevant operating figures played an important role here.

To support the follow up conferences, a system should be made available on which supports interactive succession planning. Promerit supported Haniel in the choice of a visualization tool, which would integrate well into the SAP format and corresponds well to the demands of the diverse corporate structure.

Phase 2 – Conception of the Processes and Instruments with Implementation on the Basis of SAP: In the second phase the detailed concepts were developed in order to map contents and system orientation of the introduced and core processes. Involved were the detailed elaboration on the central elements:

• Employee dialogues (Evaluation of performance and potential)
• A uniform employee profile
• Validation and calibration methods
• Development of talent and successor pools
• Follow-up conferences in the business sectors.

After the conceptual design, Promerit supported Haniel through the implementation for SAP EhP4 and Nakisa. Haniel is the first user of a universal Talent Management practice on the SAP basis and with complete master data integration.

Services of Promerit AG

Promerit AG supported the project holistically from the strategy to the implementation with the following services:

• Strategy Development and Formulation of a Talent Management Roadmap
• Technical conception of the detail processes for succession planning, talent validation and employee dialogues
• Design of corporate follow-up conference and departmental follow-up conferences including development of talent and successor pools
• Definition of strategic operating figures in the context of strategic succession planning
• Support during the construction of the HR IT Roadmap
• Monitoring the software selection process to visualize the succession planning
• Implementation of various tools based upon SAP EhP4
• Development of cross cutting issues, such as job architecture and competency models for the integration of  the master data system
• Configuration and development of standard features.

Client Benefits

The Talent Management Initiative at Haniel was initialized by corporate management. It is part of a strategic development and alignment of the conglomerate, which strengthens the market leading position of the corporate sectors, as well as optimizing the synergy of the corporate group.

The principal advantages of the new instruments are:

• Establishing a performance orientated management culture leading to an improvement in performance for the company as a whole
• Improving the attractiveness for employees through systematic development and career opportunities corporate wide
• Effective composition of the employee structure through strategic personnel planning
• Interlinking corporate development with personnel measures
• Identification at an early stage of vacancy risks in key positions
• Developing pools with function specific candidates for successor positions
• Consistent validation and calibration of potential candidates
• Constant development of  confirmed candidates
• Optimal occupancy of key positions.