The Society of Research Administrators (SRA) held its annual meeting this year from October 16th to 20th, 2010, in Chicago. SRA Symposium presentations were made on October 19, including one entitled, “Succession Planning in an Independent Research Institute” by TRIUMF’s own team of Succession Planners, involving Human Resources staff, administration staff, and department heads from all of TRIUMF. Jim Hanlon, TRIUMF’s head of Human Resources and Administration, made the presentation of the Success Planning team’s work. The team’s poster won the award for Best North American Poster of the Year!
TRIUMF has unique hiring issues to address as an independent research institute. TRIUMF’s ~350 employees and researchers make up an aging work force with highly technical skills that the organization must maintain--and retain. At the same time, TRIUMF must continue work in the face of budget cutbacks and operating in a five-year funding cycle. On top of that, Vancouver is an expensive place to live, so TRIUMF can suffer brain-drain due to lack of opportunities. TRIUMF also does incredible research on medical isotopes, fundamental questions of the universe and matter, and contributes many resources to cancer research and therapy that save many Canadian lives every year. As dynamics organizations like TRIUMF grow and evolve in changing constraints, succession planning is a tool that makes it all work.
The Succession Planning poster covered the management of technical skill loss as a result of its employees’ retirement. It also presented a strategy for considering not just the particular positions that needed to be filled, but also the ‘functions’ of the person in that position – his or her combined technical and soft skills.
The Succession Planning team has broken the process down into two broad phases. The first phase includes the ongoing, site-wide assessment of the people, functions, and positions, in consultation with staff across the organization. The phase also covers strategies for recruitment, and the classification of the type of impact that would occur if a staff member were to leave, and the ease of replacement. The second phase involves the review of the decisions made, costs of recruitment and training, the skill sets of the organization, and the maintenance of the staff functions.
The main message of the poster though, is not hard to grasp. An organization like TRIUMF is akin to a living creature, complete with organs, bones, and muscles that carry out specific functions that need to be maintained. The people of TRIUMF carry out those functions that keep the organization alive and the laboratory running, and if those people were not there, everything would fall apart. However, people can come and go, and that is why Human Resources must plan for the eventual departure of the staff in all positions at all levels of TRIUMF.
Congratulations all, for your straightforward and informative winning poster on the succession planning team’s strategies for keeping TRIUMF well-run by its team of collaborative and highly skilled staff and scientists from around the world!
See the Succession Planning poster here:
http://www.srainternational.org/sra03/uploadedFiles/Hanlon_poster%20for%20Proceedings.pdf
-- Jessica Coccimiglio, Communications Assistant