1. Position-Based Succession Plans

Position plans are the primary type of succession plan. They represent a specific position within the company, often tied to a single employee (e.g., "Head of Sales for North America" or "Manager of Team A"). These plans are initially created with the current employee as the incumbent.

As that employee transitions out of the role, via internal role change or leaving the company, the position plan remains and will use the new employee who eventually fills the original position as the new incumbent.

2. Role-Based Succession Plans

Role plans cover a specific role across all employees who hold that role (e.g., "Engineering Manager" or "Sales Lead"). They provide a view of the full succession pipeline for the role, rather than focusing on a specific employee. Incumbents include all employees currently in the role.

This can be useful where you may want to have a succession plan that covers any of your employees in that role and the specific incumbent does not matter as much. For example if there is a "Project Manager" role shared across several teams and the succession pool will apply the same to any of the specific employees.

3. Create Succession Plans

For steps to create succession plans, read Creating Succession Plans.