CRITICAL ROLE IDENTIFICAITON
Critical roles are the one if those positions are vacant- it is very difficult to fill since limited candidate
available in the market, have high impact on the business, very minimal internal talent bench strength
and it is take long time to develop those skills internally and those skills set are unique.
Basically these roles have direct impact on performance of the organization or the function, critical for
the delivery of the organization strategy, significate effect on the revenue and external relationship
(customer) key skills and competencies that may be rare or difficult to acquire in the market.
The Critical Roles Identification Questionnaire helps to identify list all the roles in your company that are
important to operations. While we may likely to list your RSM, Sales team, Engineering managers first, it’s
also important to take a step back and look beyond management.
Are there any critical roles at other levels – for example, PLM – Developer, in Tech support Electrical wire
Harness, Surface Plastic Design etc
These roles are identified based following five criteria. Once critical roles are identified, the next step is
retention and develop succession planning.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Urgency- Urgent need to fill this positions
Impact – Strong Impact on business
Skills - Unique Skill Set or Knowledge Base
Internal Talent - Poor Internal Bench Strength
External Talent - Low External Candidate Availability
On a scale from 1-5, indicate your level of concern for each role at each criterion. Use higher ratings to
indicate areas of greater concern
Identifying Critical Roles - Using Spreadsheet.
1. Urgent Need to Fill the Position
In the context of succession planning, urgency refers to how likely it is that a role is going to be vacant
soon reason would be transfer, promotion, natural attrition or retirement. Based on past conversations
and eligibility to retire, indicate how quickly you anticipate needing to fill the role. Roles where the
incumbent is planning to stay for more than five years should be considered low urgency (1-2). Roles
where the incumbent is planning to leave within three years should be considered urgent (4-5). Be sure
to take into consideration that an employee may also be offered or look opportunities elsewhere.
2. Strong Impact on Business
On this questionnaire, ‘impact’ refers to the extent to which a vacancy would affect your organization.
Impactful roles are those which allow businesses to operate as usual. In other words, they are
gatekeepers, task completers, and decision-makers. Impactful roles might not always be the most obvious
ones, so make sure you take time to consider whether an overlooked position lower down in the
organization’s hierarchy might really be a critical point of support. Again, higher scores indicate a greater
impact.
3. Unique Skill Set or Knowledge Base
Consider whether the roles listed require any specialized skills or knowledge. Evaluate not only the skills
needed to be qualified for the role, but also the institutional knowledge that is needed to be successful in
this role. Understanding the level of skill needed for a role does more than indicate how critical the role
is – it is also important information that will be used to identify qualified succession candidates, set
development goals, and/or recruit and on-board if hiring externally.
4. Internal Talent
Use this column to evaluate how long it would take for internal succession candidates to become ready
to fill each role. Roles for which you will have multiple succession candidates ready in 1-3 years should
be considered lower urgency (score 1-2). Roles for which few candidates will be ready, and they won’t be
ready for 5+ years should be considered higher urgency (score 4-5). Collectively (column total), this score
will be an indicator of the strength of your succession bench.
5. External Talent
Although promoting from within is generally more effective than hiring externally, some cases will
inevitably require you to look beyond your organization. For this reason, it’s important to know how
difficult it will be to fill a critical role with an external candidate. Higher scores indicate greater difficulty
in finding external hires and indicate a stronger need for succession planning and internal talent pool
development.
Critical Role Identification Questionnaire
1 Not true of this role 2 Slightly true 3 Somewhat true of this role 4 Moderately true of this role 5
Extremely true of this role
External
Internal
Urgency
Impact
Skills
Talent
Talent
This role is
A vacancy
Role
Hiring
No internal
likely to
would
requires
externally
Roles
candidates
Total
be vacant soon immediately specialized
for
are
(i.e., attrtion,
impact
skills or
this role
ready for this
retirement)
business
knowledge
would be
role
difficult
0
0
0
0
0