The Importance of Succession Planning

The Importance of Succession Planning

As your business changes and evolves so too should your employee map. This could mean some employees leaving, retiring, or looking for more responsibility in their careers, while new members of staff are joining your company. Having a solid succession plan to deal with these changes in your workforce is vital, and perhaps the most important tool you have at your disposal in all of this is honesty. Creating a culture of honesty will mean you can be upfront with your employees about changes and they can be truthful with you about what they want and how they see their future, and what their concerns might be.

Leadership succession

This can be one of the trickiest areas to navigate as a manager or employer. Leadership positions will become available due to various factors, but it would be a mistake to assume that the second in command will simply move on up into this role when it becomes vacant. Your future leaders may well be working within your business right now, but that doesn’t mean they are ready for this leap. Investing in training will be vital if you want to retain the staff you have and utilise them to their full potential.

Hidden gems

So, if the obvious successor to a role is not the right successor, who is? Succession planning is important because it could be the best person for this job is a hidden gem, someone who is already an employee but isn’t the obvious candidate. Talent management within your organisation is crucial if you want to keep on top of this issue and have a solid succession plan in place. Know who your employees are, what they do, and who is the most vital to your business. The most important employees often fly under the rada rand you need seek the mout.

Internal training and development

There are a few reasons why internal candidates are a better option for filling vacancies thanexternal. They already work within your business and understand the culture and practices. They have built up relationships and want to progress. It saves you the time and expense of employing externally. But your internal candidates are unlikely to be match fit already so you’ll need to organise internal training and development. This will also make your employees feel valued as you are giving them a leg up to their future.

Why perform a skills gap analysis?

As we mentioned in the post ‘Identifying the Skills Gaps in your Organisation’ performing askills gap analysis will make it clear where you need to recruit and where you need to train. At Comurce we can make this a much simpler process by helping you to have a solid succession plan ahead of needing one and helping you build a much stronger workforce. When you perform a skills gap analysis with our help you’ll have a clear picture of your employees within your organisation and what you need todo to move your business forward.