Introduction
Succession planning is an essential process that helps organizations identify, develop, and prepare employees to take over critical roles when they become vacant. Whether the vacancy occurs due to retirement, resignation, promotion, or any unforeseen circumstance, a well-configured succession planning process ensures business continuity by maintaining a ready pipeline of capable talent.
The Succession Planning extension in uKnowva HRMS enables organizations to identify high-potential employees, evaluate successors based on multiple parameters, measure skill gaps, assess readiness, and create a structured talent pool for future leadership positions. Before your HR team or managers begin using the module, it is important to configure its settings according to your organization's succession strategy.
In this article, you will learn how to access the Succession Planning configuration page and understand available settings in detail so you can tailor the application to your organization's requirements.
Before configuring the Succession Planning application, ensure that the Succession Planning extension is installed in your uKnowva HRMS instance. If the extension is not available in your system, install it from the Extension Store.
Once the installation is complete, you can proceed with the configuration steps explained below.
Step 1: Open the Apps Manager
Begin by logging in to your uKnowva HRMS account. After logging in, navigate to the top-right corner of the screen and click on your Profile icon. A list of options will appear. From this list, select uKnowva Configuration.
The configuration page contains all the administrative settings for your HRMS instance. From the menu available on the left side of the page, click Apps Manager.
This section displays all the applications that are currently available in your system.
Step 2: Locate the Succession Planning Application
Inside the Apps Manager, either scroll through the list of available applications or use the search bar to quickly find the Succession Planning application.
Once you locate the application, click on it to open its configuration page.
Here you will find all the settings that control how succession planning works throughout your organization.
Step 3: Configure Retirement Planning Settings
The first configuration available is Retirement Planning Window (Years Before Retirement Age). This setting determines how many years before an employee becomes eligible for retirement, they should begin appearing in the Team section with the reason Retirement. The application automatically calculates this based on the retirement information configured in your HRMS.
By default, the system uses the Retirement Age configured in the HRM Lite application. For example, if your organization's retirement age is 60 years and you specify a planning window of 3 years, employees will begin appearing in the succession planning list once they reach the age of 57 years.
If your organization has configured a Retirement Date field instead of relying on retirement age, the system uses that date for the calculation. For example, if an employee's retirement date is 31-12-2050 and the Retirement Planning Window is set to 3 years, the employee will automatically appear in the succession planning list from 31-12-2047 onward.
Note: The retirement age is taken from the HRM Lite application. If you have not configured it yet, navigate to the HRM Lite application and locate the Enter Retirement Age setting. Specify the appropriate retirement age according to your organization's policy before configuring this option.
The Max Skill Gap for Successors When Incumbent Is Near Retirement (%) setting defines the maximum allowed skill gap for candidates to appear in the Possible Successors table when an employee is within the retirement planning window. Candidates whose skill gap exceeds the specified percentage are automatically hidden from the recommendation list. However, successors who have already been nominated or previously assessed remain visible. This setting affects only the Possible Successors table and does not impact the Team, Skill Gap Dashboard, or Talent Pool views.
Step 4: Configure Skill Synchronization and Candidate Suggestions
The Ask Before Syncing Current Proficiency to Skills & Endorsements setting controls whether updates made during succession planning should also update the employee's Skills & Endorsements profile.
When enabled, the system asks for confirmation before syncing the current proficiency. If disabled, the updates are saved only within succession planning. Desired proficiency values are never synced to the employee profile.
The User IDs to hide from suggestion cards only setting allows administrators to prevent specific users from appearing in the suggested candidate cards.
You can enter one or more numeric user IDs separated by commas. These users will no longer appear as suggested candidates, although they may still appear in the complete successors table if they satisfy other eligibility criteria.
Step 5: Configure Successor Identification Rules
The Who Appears in the Possible Successors Table setting determines which employees are shown as potential successors. You can choose to display only direct reports and employees with matching role skills, or allow all employees within the viewer's accessible scope to appear.
The Include Peers with Any Mapped Role Skill option determines whether colleagues reporting to the same manager should also become eligible successors if they possess any mapped role skills.
The If Pool is Empty, Show Full Scope setting prevents an empty successor list. When enabled, the application automatically displays all accessible users except the incumbent whenever no eligible successors are found using the configured rules.
The Skills Used for Match Percentage and Designation Gap setting specifies which designation skills should be used while calculating succession scores and skill gaps. Depending on your organization's requirements, you can evaluate only mandatory and recommended skills or include every skill mapped to the designation.
The Structured Skill Gap Table: Skills in Dropdown option controls which skills appear while adding or editing skill gaps. Administrators can either limit the selection to designation-related skills or allow users to choose from the complete skill master available in the system.
Step 6: Configure Performance and Scoring Settings
The 9-Box / Potential Field on User Master (Optional) setting lets you include 9-box potential scores in succession score calculations. If no field is selected, the application uses the employee's last three KRA ratings. If a valid field is configured, it combines the KRA ratings with the normalized 9-box score to calculate the overall performance score.
The Default Readiness Score for Unrecognized Values setting specifies the fallback score used when the application encounters an unrecognized readiness value. Standard values such as Ready Now, Within 1 Year, and Within 3–5 Years use predefined scores, while all other values use the fallback score.
Similarly, the Default Retention Score for Unrecognized Values setting defines the fallback value when an unexpected retention category is saved. Standard values such as High, Medium, and Low continue to use their predefined scores.
The application also allows administrators to define the contribution of different evaluation factors through weight settings.
The Weight: Performance (P) controls how much influence employee performance has on the final succession score.
The Weight: Skill Match (S) defines the contribution of skill matching between the employee and the target role.
The Weight: Readiness (R) specifies how much importance is given to the employee's readiness timeline.
The Weight: Tenure (T) determines how employee experience within the organization contributes to the overall succession score.
Finally, Weight: Retention (Rn) controls the influence of employee retention potential.
For accurate succession scoring, ensure that the combined value of all five weights equals 1.0.
Step 7: Configure Search Options
The Succession Planning application allows administrators to define which columns should be searchable across different pages.
Separate search configurations are available for the Team, Possible Successors, Skill Gap Dashboard, Talent Pool, and Past Cycles pages. You can specify the fields that users should be able to search, making it easier to locate employees, successors, designations, departments, performance scores, skill gaps, readiness timelines, retention values, and additional profile fields.
Step 8: Configure Team View Rules
The Team View: Extra Include Rule allows administrators to include additional employees in the Team page even if they do not qualify through retirement, exit, or designation rules.
The corresponding Team Include Rule (Query Builder) lets administrators build custom conditions based on employee master data. Employees matching these conditions automatically appear in the Team view.
The Team View: Restrict by Profile Field setting performs the opposite function by limiting Team records to employees matching a selected profile field and value.
To complete this restriction, configure both the Restrict Gate: Profile Field and the Restrict Gate: Required Value settings. The application compares employee data against these values before displaying them in the Team view.
Step 9: Configure Filter Columns
The application also provides separate More Filters configurations for the Team view, Possible Successors, Skill Gap Dashboard, Talent Pool, and Past Cycles.
These settings determine which fields appear as additional filtering options throughout the application, allowing users to narrow down records more efficiently.
Step 10: Save the Configuration
After reviewing and configuring all the available settings according to your organization's succession planning strategy, click the Save button to apply your changes.
Once the settings are saved, the Succession Planning application will begin using these configurations while identifying successors, calculating skill gaps, generating succession scores, managing talent pools, and planning for future leadership positions.
Conclusion
That's it!
You've now successfully configured the Succession Planning application in uKnowva HRMS.
By configuring these settings, you define how retirement planning, successor identification, skill gap analysis, succession scoring, and talent pool generation work.
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