What is Succession Planning and why is it Important.

As an organization or a business owner, looking at the company you have built, your sweat equity, and then how do you imagine it will last or continue long after you are gone.

Big organizations like NBC, bottlers of Coke, MTN, Leadway Insurance, Toyota, Ford, and others, how have they been able to keep the values, business approach, brand, and the company running for so long.

The simple answer is ‘Succession Planning”. They have a system that builds, trains, and keeps top skilled and talented personnel within the organization to ensure the seamless movement of talent within the organization to keep its growth and development sustainable. No matter your size, no business can run sustainably without talented people ready to move into key positions when the current occupants leave.

So what should a business or organization do to ensure that its core values, work culture and goals are being met long after its founders and top executives are gone?

The answer is succession planning. It is a dedicated process built for keeping talent within an organization. it is the principle of identifying important job skills, knowledge, social relationships, and organizational practices and passing them on down, to prepare the next generation of workers.

Why Is Succession Planning Important And How To Start?

Succession planning being the process of planning towards the transition of leadership positions is very important. Why ?

1.) It is part of an organization’s talent management process.

2.) It is a brilliant way to cut the costs of recruitment, enabling organizations to manage recruitment in-house.

3.) It helps organizations recognize key roles in their companies and the employees best suited to fill those roles in the future.

Dangers Of Not Having A Succession Plan And Why You Need To Understand Them?

There are lots of stories about how companies decline after the founder/owner retired or died. A company opens itself up to unnecessary risk when there is no succession plan. In a world where changes occur rapidly, key people leave, fall ill, or have to be replaced, people switch jobs and even careers too often.

If there is no plan of how an organization will carry on when key persons leave or are no longer available, that company is setting itself up for extinction.

Steps To Achieving Succession Planning And How To Implement Them

Succession planning requires a systematic approach for identifying, developing, and retaining capable and skilled employees in line with current and projected business objectives.

At Finesse Consults, organizations that struggle to maintain a consistent flow of highly skilled personnel engage with us to solve that problem. We start by taking the following key steps;

1. We identify key areas and positions in the company
2. Identify the competencies for key areas and positions
3. Identify interested employees and assess them against what they can do
4. We then develop and implement a succession and knowledge transfer strategy
5. Then, along with the company, we evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the strategy.

Speak with one of our consultants today and let’s develop a succession plan that ensures the longevity of your organization and the continued sustainability of key talents needed to keep delivering quality and optimal results.