Home » Blog » Succession Planning – What is it and why do we need it?

Unless you’re royalty, you will need to consider succession planning at some point, and even they need to consider elements of it!

So, what is succession planning?

Simply put, succession planning identifies future staffing needs and the people with the skills and potential to perform in these future roles.

Succession planning plays a vital role in the long-term success and sustainability of your business, and over the next few weeks, our blogs are going to take you through the details of the whole succession planning process step by step.

So, we know what succession planning is, but why do we need it?  Well, succession planning can help you to plan and proactively address skill gaps, both now and in the future, which will minimise business disruption.  It will also create a culture of career growth and development, and we all know that part of being a good manager, is supporting and nurturing your employees to succeed, and progress.

But why do we want employees to progress and change jobs?  Things are great as they are, I hear you say.

Jenny’s our best administrator. She knows all of our systems and processes and the team love her.   We can’t possibly let her move into the Ops Manager’s job.  She’ll be spending all of her time, dealing with budgets, forecasting and financial data and we need her to be running our processes and getting our business done!

So, what’s the answer?  Do you hold Jenny back because she good at running your processes?

What impact is that going to have on Jenny? I suspect she’ll feel overlooked, demoralised and may look for another job.  You’ve then lost a great person from your business, and now you’re really exposed.

So, what could you do, to support Jenny to progress, whilst keeping your team happy and running your processes?

You can succession plan.  You can tap into Jenny’s knowledge, relationships and expertise, and pass these onto others in your business.

This process is called knowledge transfer and knowledge transfer is a fundamental part of succession planning.  Knowledge Transfer is a method of sharing information, abilities, and ideas across different areas in your business.

So, that’s why we need to succession plan.  Next time we’ll look at how you can get this started by identifying your key roles and potential successors.

Has this been helpful?  If you need more help please contact us on TellMeMore@HRBusCons.co.uk

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