Decentralized Succession Planning at Newell Rubbermaid

In most organizations, succession planning is owned by the senior executive team, but a central HR department has primary responsibility for the data — the list of high potentials and successors along with their performance data and development plans.

When a role opens up, the HR department will dust off the list of successors and give it to executives to review and select a candidate.

“That’s really not efficient,” said Brian Hults, vice president of global organization and people development at Newell Rubbermaid.

With 13 business units, featuring such brands as Sharpie, Calphalon, Lenox, Paper Mate and Rubbermaid, rolled up into three business groups, Newell Rubbermaid is a global business with a decentralized structure. Centralized succession planning simply doesn’t make sense.

“Basically we’ve got four people who run HR for a vast majority of our organization — a corporate HR head and three group HR heads,” Hults said. “The group HR heads are responsible for business units of about $2 billion each, and each one of them has got in the neighborhood of 6,500 employees in their area of responsibility. If I can’t entrust this data to those people, that’s a significant problem.”

Newell Rubbermaid decentralizes succession planning to make it more efficient and responsive to each business unit’s needs. That requires simplifying some of the complicated succession processes and providing business unit leaders with a clear, actionable plan. Having a reasonable, readable succession file makes replacing a key role easier and faster.

“When one of the key roles comes open in the area of their responsibility, they literally have the file … they go to the candidate list, and they know who the internal people are who have been vetted by our leadership team to be a candidate for that role,” Hults said.

The results have been significant. Hults said the internal fill rate for open executive positions was in the 20 to 30 percent range five years ago. In 2010, that rate was 89 percent for vice president and above.

“The proof is in the pudding,” Hults said. “This is a much more efficient way of filling the key roles than something a bit more traditional.”