The study of 1,000 senior leaders also found less than a quarter (23%) believe they have a solid pipeline of ‘ready now’ candidates to fill eldership positions.
A majority (78%) of executives also said they believe their organisation’s succession management programmes are only for very senior levels of management.
Respondents said the ideal ratio for developing internal talent to hiring externally would be 2:1, but the majority still end up having to use external talent to fill leadership positions.
Korn Ferry leadership & talent consulting managing partner Steve Newhall said succession planning programmes often fail due to being “static”, and not looking beyond “a snapshot in time”.
He added: “Effective succession management is an ongoing process that should run deep into an organisation, not merely look at the top levels of management".
Newhall also said that succession planning must be aligned to other talent management initiatives in order to be successful.
“Companies sometimes need to look outside their organisation to fill a particular role, especially at early stages in their development, but most companies are over-reliant on external hires and it is something they could address by developing a proper integrated succession management programme,” he said.
