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Succession Management

 Where people in organisations are concerned there are some simple facts of life:

  1. your best people are constantly looking for new challenge and responsibility. If they don’t get it from you they will leave
  2. eventually some of your key people will leave either from their own choice, your choice, retirement or worse

Managing succession is about:

  • planning how to replace key people should they leave the organisation
  • planning how to resource new positions as the organisation grows
  • planning how to retain your start performers so they can continue to contribute to the business rather than leave to further their career

As people leave you could recruit people from outside the organisation. However, this can be expensive, it takes time to do and the person you recruit will have very little prior experience or knowledge about the organisation. Whilst new blood can be a good thing it makes sense to promote people from inside the organisation wherever possible.

 By managing succession effectively you will be able to:

  • save the cost and time involved of recruiting externally
  • tap into your existing pool of talented people
  • hold on to your best people as they will see a future inside the organisation and not look to leave
  • attract people to the organisation as you can demonstrate future career opportunities for them
  • create a motivated workforce who recognise there are career opportunities
  • “grow your own” where specific skills or knowledge are required or you have a unique way of doing things
  • feel more secure in handing over responsibility to new people as they are a known quantity to you

We do not have a pre-defined template for Succession Management. However, we have experience of implementing a wide variety of processes. We will help you:

  • define what you want to achieve from the process
  • design a bespoke system that managers view as a tool to help them rather than as being an extra piece of bureaucracy
  • implement the process by providing training to managers on how to use the process
  • support you in assessing the capability of your existing people
  • support you in developing your key people
  • support you in recruiting external candidates where required