Succession planning is essential for ensuring business continuity when employees leave or transition to new roles. A well-structured succession plan template helps organizations proactively identify and develop future leaders, reducing disruptions and knowledge gaps. Using an Excel-based template streamlines the process, allowing HR teams to log key employee details, assess successor readiness and track transitions efficiently. Whether due to promotions, retirements or unexpected departures, having a structured format in place ensures a smooth leadership transition and business stability.
Why You Need a Succession Plan Template
An Excel succession plan template provides a standardized approach to managing employee transitions. It allows organizations to document important information about departing employees and their successors in one structured format. This ensures consistency, transparency and efficiency in succession planning. Additionally, it helps HR teams identify skill gaps, readiness levels and development needs for successors. By using a template, businesses can reduce risks, improve workforce planning and prepare for future leadership needs with a clear, organized strategy.
The departure of key employees affects the normal operations of any organization, as well as any projects that it might be executing. In such cases, it’s important to have project management software like the award-winning ProjectManager to adapt to workforce changes. ProjectManager offers project management tools such as Gantt charts, workload management charts, timesheets and project dashboards that can help assign tasks to the right employees, create project schedules, allocate resources, balance your teams’ workload, monitor progress and track costs. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.
When to Use a Succession Plan Template
Employees may leave an organization anytime for a variety of reasons, which is why any business should have a succession planning procedure in place. Here are some of the most common scenarios to use a succession plan template.
- Leadership Transitions: When senior executives or key managers plan to retire or leave, a succession plan template ensures a smooth transition by documenting potential successors, required skills and training needs. This minimizes disruption and ensures leadership continuity.
- Rapid Organizational Growth: If a company is expanding quickly, new leadership roles may need to be filled. A succession plan template helps identify internal talent and prepare employees for promotions, ensuring that key positions are filled efficiently.
- Emergency Replacements: Unexpected departures due to resignations, medical leaves, or other unforeseen circumstances can disrupt operations. Having a structured succession plan in place ensures there is always a qualified replacement ready to take over the role.
Who Should Use This Free Succession Plan Template?
This succession plan template is ideal for HR professionals, business owners and department managers who need to plan for workforce changes. Large corporations, small businesses and nonprofit organizations can all benefit from a structured approach to leadership continuity.
It is especially useful for companies with long-term workforce planning strategies, ensuring employees are properly trained and ready for future roles. Whether for executive leadership, mid-level management or specialized roles, this template provides a simple yet effective way to manage employee succession.
How to Use This Succession Plan Template
Now let’s review what’s included in this succession plan template and how to use it as an action plan to ensure employee transitions are smooth.
1. Enter Information About the Departing Employee
The first section of the succession plan template focuses on logging key details about the employee who is leaving. This ensures that all relevant information is documented before the transition process begins. By recording the employee’s role, departure reason and planned departure date, HR teams can better anticipate workforce changes and minimize disruptions. Filling out this section provides a clear starting point for succession planning and helps align expectations for finding a suitable replacement.
- Current Employee Name
- Role Description
- Reason for Departure
- Planned Departure Date
2. Enter Information About the Succeeding Employee
Once the departing employee’s details are recorded, the next step is to identify their successor. This includes noting who will take over the role, their current position, how prepared they are for the transition and the status of the knowledge transfer. If the successor is coming from another department or outside the company, this section helps determine their readiness level and any skill gaps that need to be addressed before the transition is finalized.
- Successor Name
- Successor Current Position
- Readiness Level
- Knowledge Transfer Status
- Skills Gap
3. Identify Any Actions That Need to Be Taken Before the Transition
The final step in using the succession plan template is to outline any necessary development actions to ensure the successor is fully prepared. Organizations can document what training, mentoring, or onboarding efforts are required before the transition occurs. This section also includes the planned transition date and an area for final approval, ensuring that leadership is aligned on the succession plan before implementation.
- Development Actions
- Planned Transition Date
- Final Approval
How to Manage Project Teams With ProjectManager
The succession plan template is a good way to get all the information gathered in one place, but the problem is that place is a silo. To track progress, collaborate and more requires a more advanced tool like project management software. ProjectManager is an award-winning project management software that helps organizations across industries manage projects thanks to its project planning, scheduling and tracking features. In addition, it has powerful team management and resource planning features that allow team leaders to manage their staff.
Multiple Project Management Views
ProjectManager offers multiple project management views such as Gantt charts, kanban boards, task lists and project calendars, which allow team leaders to create project schedules, assign tasks to employees, monitor their progress and track the costs of the resources required to execute the work. Similarly, employees can use these tools to manage their own activities, including succession plans.
Resource Management and Cost Tracking Features
The project management views mentioned above automatically sync with workload management charts which can be utilized to visualize the work allocation for employees and ensure tasks are evenly distributed among the team. ProjectManager also offers online timesheets that log the work hours of all team members and track labor costs.
Real-time Project Management Dashboards and Reports
ProjectManager is equipped with real-time project dashboards that display high-level data such as the comparison between planned and actual project costs, workload distribution per employee, a task progress summary and a timeline overview. This data helps project managers quickly determine whether a project is on track or if there are any delays or cost overruns.
Related Workforce Management Content
Managing projects can be overwhelming, especially in organizations facing workforce changes. For this reason, we’ve created blogs, templates, ebooks and videos on project management and workforce planning topics. Here are some of them.
- Workforce Planning Basics for Businesses and PMOs
- How to Give Employee Feedback: Examples & Best Practices
- The 15 Best Performance Review Questions (with Examples)
- What Is a Transition Plan? Example & Template Included
- Management Levels & the Four Functions of Management
ProjectManager is online project and portfolio management software that connects teams whether they’re in the office or out in the field. They can share files, comment at the task level and stay updated with email and in-app notifications. Join teams at Avis, Nestles and Siemens who use our software to deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.