When your business is thriving and your financial outlook seems secure, it can be all too easy to sit back and relax. However, what happens when the unexpected occurs—an unforeseen resignation, an illness or accident, or a major change in leadership? This is where an internal succession plan can be critical to maintaining future growth and keeping your business running smoothly and efficiently.
The Need for Succession Planning in Teams
In order to build a succession plan strategy, it’s important that you survey your business landscape to be prepared for a variety of outcomes. Consider factors such as an aging workforce, potential knowledge gaps, and any unplanned or unexpected change. Having an internal succession plan in place will ensure a seamless workflow during transitions and allow your business to continue to thrive.
Key Components of an Effective Internal Succession Plan
When considering the implementation of an internal succession plan, take a look at the key components of having an effective and ready strategy:
Identifying high-potential employees: Take a broad look across your entire company and identify the roles most critical to your business’s productivity and performance. Then consider who would be best suited to those positions.
Developing leadership and skill enhancement programs: Leadership development is critical in terms of a business’s long-term success. Succession planning and leadership development are natural allies because they share the fundamental goal of fostering talent with hands-on guidance.
Creating a talent pipeline and career pathing: Once proper leadership has been fostered and developed, a clear career path is necessary to bring talent and skills to the right place. This will minimize disruptions and allow each candidate to prepare for their future role.
Establishing mentorship and knowledge transfer initiatives: Finding internal mentorship will save your business time and recruiting/onboarding expenses.
The Benefits of Implementing an Internal Succession Plan
Creating an internal succession plan has a myriad of benefits, from financial to personal. As mentioned above, an internal succession will minimize recruitment and training costs as you develop the skills and talent of current employees. With this, you will also see a retention of institutional knowledge as employees seek to grow their skills within the company’s framework. An internal succession will in turn increase employee loyalty and morale as your company ensures it will be led by someone who shares its values and deeply understands the company’s identity and brand.
The Process of Building an Internal Succession Plan
With so many clear benefits to an internal succession plan, it’s important to take a look at the steps necessary to build a plan that will benefit your business for generations to come. The steps include:
Building a positive family culture in your business: A family culture will help bind employees to a common cause and can help retain top talent, a key component in succession.
Assessing current team strengths and weaknesses: A healthy business should evaluate what a team does well and what can be improved. Acknowledging gaps in management or employee development can help you create a clearer strategy of what should be changed.
Identifying critical roles for succession planning: It’s important to identify the positions most critical to the future success of the company and seek out internal candidates to fulfill these roles.
Evaluating potential successors and their readiness: Developing the leadership of high-potential employees will give these employees time to acquire skills and knowledge to perform well in a future senior role.
When it comes to internal succession planning, our highly skilled team specializes in helping your business reach its full potential and plan for its continued future success. To learn more about succession planning and how it can benefit your team or business, contact us today.
