What is Succession Planning?

Succession planning is a process that is vital to the success of any company. It is a process where your company identifies current employees who have the potential to fill key business leadership positions in your company. From there, your company’s succession planning process will be to develop these employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities to prepare them for advancement to more challenging roles. Whether you have a big or small business, succession planning will ensure a smoother transition if an employee in a key role decides to leave the company.

Benefits of Succession Planning

What if your CEO suddenly became ill and could not perform his duties? What if members of your senior management team left to begin working for a competitor? What if your top three employees left to start their own company? Succession planning can help solve all of those “what if” scenarios. This process is essential to keep your organization moving in the right direction if any employees decide to quit, retire, or become ill. Here are some of the benefits that will have you begin drafting your company’s succession plan today:

Contingency Planning

While you cannot predict when a problem is going to arise, you can prepare a plan on how to tackle it. Succession planning keeps your company well prepared for any sudden problems that may arise in the future, ensuring that you and your employees can resume work as normally as possible.

Spend Less Time and Money

Planning the future of your company will save you time and money. When you promote and train internally, less time and money is spent recruiting and interviewing external candidates.

Get a Bird’s Eye View

A comprehensive succession plan includes high-level executives and middle managers. Evaluating your workforce to see who should fill the shoes of another employee will give you a bird’s eye view of the talent in your organization. Succession planning will also help reveal the strengths and weaknesses within your organization.

Benefits Your Business Now

Succession planning doesn’t just benefit your organization’s future; it positively affects your company right now as well. A succession plan can be used before leadership changes to build strong relationships, survive the ever-changing market, and allow for executives to review and examine the company’s current goals.

Developing Employees for Succession Planning

To create an effective succession plan, you need to identify your company’s long-term goals and find the right people who are onboard for what the future has in store. By including internal employees in your succession plan, not only will you inspire them to work harder and be motivated, but you can also get an inside view of the day to day operations of your company.

To develop your employees for future roles, you can use practices like lateral moves, special projects, team leadership roles, and training opportunities. You will retain your superior employees at a higher rate, because they will be excited for the future and appreciate the time, effort, and development you are investing in them.

In order for your succession planning to be as effective as it can be, you need to identify and understand the needs of your employees, and you have to make sure the employees you are training understand their career paths and the roles they are going to fill. You will also need to keep these key employees satisfied so they do not decide to leave the company. If your succession plan requires you to hire from the outside, you will need to know the employment trends for your area and industry to see if you will have a difficult time filling that position.

Succession Planning in New Jersey

Technology companies, law firms, and real estate enterprises can all benefit from succession planning. With our background in tax and other financial matters, RMG is fully equipped to help clients with succession planning, no matter how complex the challenge may seem. For more information on how RMG can help you build a strong succession plan, please contact us today.