You have worked for various organisations, which include retail, education and banking, as an HR practitioner. Your role in these jobs included supporting HR managers and taking on administrative roles in these departments. You have garnered various skills and experience in the past 10 years, and have become expert to the various responsibilities and functions of human resource management. Your manager is soon to retire and has recommended that you be his successor. You currently work for a public university in Cape Town, whose primary goal is to provide affordable higher education. Before you are given the position, you have to go through a series of processes with which you are familiar. Answer these questions to demonstrate your knowledge of the field.

As an HR practitioner, you know that succession planning is closely tied to leadership development. Hence, you have been given training and on-the-job experience to prepare you for this post for the past couple of years that you have worked for the university. Discuss the benefits of succession planning and then examine the five steps of the process to discuss the criteria that you think your manager and the university are applying to assess your readiness for this position and whether you think this process is effective. Note: You should consider elements of the HR planning cycle and where this process falls in that cycle

Now that you have considered the criteria that the university and your manager may have applied to place you in this position and the effectiveness of succession planning, you should think about and plan ahead for your position and career as the new manager. Using the career planning process, examine where you are in your career and demonstrate where this undertaking fits in your career plan, consider: Your values, skills and interests, and what type of manager you will be; The life, work and learning options that will be available for to you and how you can use the options to make you a better manager; Whether this change will fit with your personal circumstances; and The manner in which you will fine-tune your work and learning plans to help you manage the changes in your life and the world of work.

You have now discussed your career and now need to think about the type of leader you will be and how effective you will be, as a manager, in the department. Select a leadership style, which you think best describes you, and then give three reasons why you think this style of leadership will ensure efficiency in the university and in your department. Note: In your reasoning, highlight any reward and remuneration that you will propose in future to increase your department and the universitys efficiency.