A role marked succession-critical is one that, if it became vacant, would materially affect the organisation's ability to operate. The mark itself does not change the hiring flow at all. What it does is feed the role into Succession planning, where you can see who on your team is ready to step into it.
How to mark a role as critical
Two places:
- On the role wizard, when you create the role — there is a checkbox This is a succession-critical role.
- On an existing role's detail page, under Edit role — toggle the same flag.
The flag is reversible at any time. Marking a role critical does not lock it; you can still edit, archive, or fill it as normal.
What it changes
Marking a role critical:
- Adds it to the succession bench at
/{slug}/app/grow/succession. - Causes the platform to compute readiness scores for every employee against this role's required competencies, on every assessment completion.
- Surfaces the role in the home dashboard's Succession-critical roles count.
- Adds a small CRITICAL label to the role card wherever it appears.
It does not:
- Change the hiring pipeline behaviour for this role.
- Require an additional approval step.
- Hide the role from anyone who would normally see it.
- Slow down screening or interview scheduling.
Which roles to mark
The mark is most useful when used sparingly. A workspace that flags every role as critical loses the signal. The roles worth marking are usually:
- Single-points-of-failure — the only person who can sign off on releases, the only person who knows a critical vendor relationship.
- Senior leadership — head of engineering, head of finance, head of operations.
- Specialist roles where the talent pool is shallow — a specific niche (compliance officer for a regulated industry, lead actuary, head of Sharia compliance for an Islamic finance product).
- Roles whose vacancy would disrupt the organisation for more than a quarter.
A reasonable starting frame: roles where the cost-of-vacancy per month exceeds three months of the role's salary.
What if the role is filled
A filled role can still be marked critical. Indeed, this is the most common case — most succession planning is done for roles that are currently filled and might one day become vacant. The succession dashboard will show, for each critical role, the current incumbent and the bench of internal candidates ranked by readiness.
Next
Once the role is authored and marked appropriately, the next step is the interview rubric — the structured questions and scoring template you will use during interviews.