Talent and succession management are at the heart of modern HR strategies. Attracting, developing, and retaining high-potential employees is no longer enough — organizations must now rely on data to anticipate needs, plan successions, and maximize skills development.

As part of our “List of Lists” series, we present 41 HR metrics to help you track and optimize your talent and succession management practices. These indicators can help you assess your talent pool, evaluate the performance of your development programs, and determine how prepared your organization is to face internal and external changes.

Succession Planning and Key Roles (13)

• Number of key positions identified
• Percentage of key positions out of all positions
• Number of senior leadership positions identified as strategic
• Number and percentage of vacant key positions
• Percentage of key positions with an identified successor
• Percentage of key positions with a ready successor
• Percentage of key positions without a successor
• Number of identified successors per key position
• Number and percentage of senior leadership positions with an identified successor
• Number and percentage of senior leadership positions with a ready successor
• Number of key positions filled internally vs. externally
• Average time to fill a vacant key position
• Percentage of succession plans updated in the past year

Successor management (13)

• Number of identified successors
• Number of successors ready immediately
• Number of successors ready in 1 to 2 years
• Number of successors ready in 3 to 5 years
• Percentage of key positions with a successor ready immediately
• Percentage of key positions with a successor ready in 1 to 2 years
• Percentage of key positions with a successor ready in 3 to 5 years
• Average skills gap between successors and key position requirements
• Number of identified successors with a development plan
• Promotion rate of identified successors
• Average performance of promoted successors
• Retention rate of successors after appointment to a key position
• Turnover rate of identified successors

High-potential management and talent development (12)

• Number of high potentials
• Percentage of high potentials out of all employees
• Number and percentage of high potentials with a development plan
• Number of employees per box in a 9-box matrix
• Promotion rate of high potentials
• Promotion percentage of high potentials
• Number of high potentials who have participated in a mentoring program
• Percentage of high potentials who have completed a specific training program
• Average number of years before a high potential is promoted to a key position
• Retention rate of high potentials after appointment to a key position
• Turnover rate of high potentials
• Internal mobility rate of high potentials

Optimizing succession plans (3)

• Number of succession plans formalized and implemented
• Alignment rate of succession plans with the company’s strategic needs
• Number of strategic succession reviews conducted per year

Tracking the right talent and succession metrics helps shift from a reactive approach to a strategic approach to human resources management. By effectively measuring your talent pool, internal mobility, and successor readiness, your organization can better align its decisions with its business objectives.

Want to go further and turn this data into actionable levers? Our team can help you build an analytics approach tailored to your organizational reality—from selecting the right metrics to interpreting them. Contact us!