7 Succession Planning Challenges Stopping Your Growth

Succession planning challenges don’t just disrupt leadership transitions; they stall your entire business. When your next generation of leaders isn’t ready, growth slows, morale drops, and your top talent starts looking elsewhere.

The cost of poor succession planning extends far beyond the C-suite. Employees want to see a future for themselves at your company – and when they don’t, they leave. In fact, 80% of employees say they’d stay longer at a company where succession planning extended beyond leadership roles, we found in our 2025 State of Performance Enablement report.

To avoid these outcomes, you need to understand what’s getting in the way. From outdated tools and siloed processes to a lack of transparency and follow-through, succession planning challenges are often systemic – and solvable. The first step toward fixing them is knowing where they show up and how they cost you.

What are the factors affecting succession planning?

Several factors can make or break your succession planning process. 

The first is integration or lack of it. Effective succession planning doesn’t happen in isolation. It depends on the connection between performance data, development conversations, and organizational goals. When these systems don’t talk to each other, it’s hard to identify high-potential employees, assess bench strength, or build the development plans people need to grow into key roles.

Another critical factor is visibility. If you don’t have a clear view of who’s ready now, who will soon be ready, and who needs more support, you can’t build a reliable pipeline. The same goes for employees – if they don’t see where they stand or what’s next, they’re less likely to stay engaged.

Leadership buy-in and manager involvement also shape your outcomes. Without regular, meaningful input from the people closest to the talent, succession planning efforts often fall flat or miss critical internal candidates.

And finally, timing matters. Treating succession planning as a one-time annual task – rather than a continuous, evolving process — creates stale data, outdated assumptions, and missed opportunities.

7 challenges of succession planning

Leadership succession planning has been a staple HR program for decades, but most companies are still navigating the same issues: manual tools, inconsistent processes, and a lack of integration between planning and development. These gaps create serious succession planning risks – from biased pipelines and missed internal candidates to declining retention and bench strength.

Let’s break down what’s getting in your way.

Succession planning still lives in spreadsheets

Many companies still rely on spreadsheets to track potential successors, even when they have large, expensive HR systems. But spreadsheets can’t scale. They limit collaboration, lack built-in tracking or reporting, and quickly become outdated.

“It’s not a dynamic aid for modern development,” says Kate Malcolm, lead product manager at Betterworks. “The pain point really is getting succession planning  out of every HR admin’s hard drive and into a product tool where they can all collaborate.”

Narrow perspectives lead to inequity and missed talent

In many organizations, succession planning risks start with how candidates are chosen. Historically it’s been one person – the incumbent – saying, “My successor is this,” and then dictating the successor. “If somebody’s only worked with this one person closely, that person will be the one that they know has the skills to replace them,” Kate says. “But there might be somebody else in the organization better skilled and better placed to take over the role.”

This kind of subjective, top-down approach overlooks high-potential employees, limits diversity, and fuels frustration. Without transparency and data, decision-making tends to default to the familiar, not the qualified.

Silos prevent visibility into bench strength

The fragmented approach most companies take to succession planning strategies has broader consequences for business success. After all, if you don’t know what your bench strength is, you can’t build it.

“It’s been very siloed,” says Bekah Roberts, talent management program manager at University of Phoenix. “We have a performance program, a talent planning program, a leadership development program—so one of the things that we’ve been focusing on in the last 18 months or so is really creating a cohesive storyline between all of those programs.”

Most organizations don’t have a clear picture of which employees are ready now, ready soon, or need development opportunities to get to the next level. That lack of insight makes it difficult to support internal candidates through tailored development plans or to measure readiness over time.

Lack of transparency erodes trust and retention

When succession is siloed at the leadership level, it excludes the broader workforce. Employees don’t see a path forward, and top talent may leave in search of opportunities elsewhere. According to our 2025 State of Performance Enablement report, 2 in 5 employees feel overlooked by succession planning – and 14% don’t even know when it’s happening or what it means. More revealing, 4 of 5 employees say they’d stay longer at a company with broader succession planning opportunities.

This points to a broader issue: “Is it that they’re being overlooked by succession,” Kate suggests, “or that they’re not being interacted with at all from a career standpoint? Often their manager isn’t given the right tools to support them.”

An effective succession planning process requires career conversations, manager support, and clear development plans—not just backroom discussions.

HRIS modules can be too complex or static

HR’s role in succession planning extends to providing the right tools, often beyond those available through a traditional HRIS. Your HR system might have a succession planning feature – but are people actually using it? In many cases, the answer is no. 

The value of a large-scale HRIS lies in its core functions, which can leave additional modules feeling like an afterthought. “The guide for that tool is overwhelming,” Kate says. “And hidden within it is just a small part about configuring succession planning.”

Even when organizations purchase robust HR tech, they often abandon the succession module due to complexity, cost, or poor fit. These systems are often difficult to update, not built for modern development needs, and disconnected from the tools managers and employees actually use. 

How to prepare future leaders: Business succession planning explained

Succession planning is separated from relevant processes

Many companies approach succession as a standalone process, separate from performance conversations, feedback, or career development. When succession is disconnected from skills data and development tools, it’s harder to support growth or spot internal candidates for key roles. Without clear visibility across systems, you risk missing top talent already inside your organization.

One-off succession planning doesn’t leave room for moving forward

Many organizations treat succession planning as a once-a-year exercise. But your talent – and your business – doesn’t stand still. 

“If I only do succession planning once a year, what happens the rest of the year?” Kate says. “Standalone succession plans risk losing long-term value if they aren’t flexible enough to integrate with HR processes – like performance management and talent development – throughout the year.”

If you don’t regularly update the plan, it quickly loses relevance. You risk missing rising talent, failing to address readiness gaps, or losing momentum on professional development. A static plan creates a negative impact on engagement and culture, especially for those left out of the process.

Solve succession planning challenges with Betterworks

Succession planning challenges can quietly stall your organization’s momentum – until a critical role opens and you’re left scrambling to fill it. But these challenges aren’t inevitable. They stem from fragmented systems, outdated tools, and static processes that don’t reflect how people actually grow. To build real bench strength, you need a more dynamic, integrated approach – one that connects performance, development, and planning in one place.

Betterworks is helping organizations make that shift. Instead of spreadsheets or HRIS modules, Betterworks gives you a clear, interactive view of your bench strength, readiness levels, and development plans – all in real time. With Betterworks, HR and business leaders can collaborate more easily, update plans continuously, and ensure high-potential employees aren’t overlooked.

Succession planning doesn’t have to be a once-a-year task or a behind-closed-doors conversation. With Betterworks, it becomes part of how you grow your people every day – supporting internal candidates, reducing risk, and building a stronger, more resilient organization for the long term.