Why a Succession Plan is Important!

written by Rebecca Sacks 

Key reasons to always have a succession plan in place: 

The longer the position remains open the more money is wasted.  Whether the manager is picking up the slack from the open position or there is another employee allocated the work, time and money are wasted.  The manager and other employee are being taken from their current responsibilities to fill-in, the productivity levels fall in all areas and money is ultimately lost.

When interviewing for open positions, as a manager or business owner, you always want to have a backup plan (candidate) just in case.  Anything is possible and changes can happen at the drop of a dime.

If someone decides they are in a bad mood that day and want to quit because something happens and rubs them the wrong way, here we are stuck, picking up their responsibilities all while having to interview new potential candidates.

In order to avoid this:

1. Plan, keep a list of potential candidates for future use
2. Make sure you are interviewing multiple candidates to be able to compile a list of alternatives
3. Look within the organization, make sure that your current employees know there is potential in other departments and that they can interview for those roles as well (but make sure you have a succession plan for their role as well)

Bottom line, it is so important to always have a backup plan for employment, life happens and unexpected things happen.  I always encourage my hiring managers to continue interviewing for any position that reports to them, while there may not be an open role now, there’s no harm in building those relationships and having those contacts for when things do fall out of place you know exactly who to call.