One of the biggest challenges affecting distributors today is planning for a succession of skilled employees. This can be due to an employee being promoted or an eventual retirement. The best succession planning happens a few years out, but most companies are not typically ready to address this key issue.
The best successors come from within your own company. You need to keep a keen focus on your next-generation leaders across all your ranks. You need to understand their strengths, weaknesses, challenges, areas of improvement so that when they are ready to move up, they are prepared. You need to know your rising stars and help make them shine. You need to have a methodology to attract, retain, cultivate, and promote your next leaders. You also need to identify potential flight risks.
As recruiters, we typically get the call when a distributor is in panic mode and has not done the proper work of preparing for the role vacancy. They need the position filled immediately and haven’t done any preparation. Don’t worry, we can handle these types of calls, but we also want to help you be ready for the unexpected.
What are some of the thing’s employers can do to avoid panic due to lack of succession planning?
We feel that succession planning should be a part of the annual business planning process. Just as a distributor plans a budgetary number for head count additions, there should be an expense allocation for resources to help recruit, train and deploy new headcount based on succession or retirement.
All department managers should do a yearly assessment of their teams and determine:
1. Where upgrades are needed
2. Determine who may be promoted, who are the rising stars
3. Have a good idea of when to expect upcoming retirements
4. Have a plan and expense allocation to train, retain, and backfill openings
This succession planning roadmap will give senior management the ability to strategical plan for role vacancy.
Succession planning should be proactive not reactive. There should be resources allocated to ease the pain of transitioning key headcount, especially at the senior level as having a senior level, high impact position open for extended periods of time can truly derail companywide progress in several ways.
We are always promoting to fill roles from within, but this too can create voids, who is going to move up, who will fill the role of the person promoted? That is why companies always need to be building their bench. The teams that win have depth; they are able to consistently promote from within their own organizations.
Every succession should move your company forward, not backwards and to address these key human resources challenge take a pinpoint roadmap and direction.
CONTACT US:
To learn more about how GRN Coastal can help you land top candidates, please contact us!
John Salvadore
Managing Partner
jsalvadore@grncoastal.com
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