Most of our time is spent focusing on the day-to-day operations and needs of our company. And rightfully so! We ensure that employees are content, customers are well taken care of and any fires that come about are quickly put out.
Being in the moment is what makes independent retailers so unique and customer-centric. However, it is still imperative to find time for strategy and planning ahead.
It’s true that we all want to build our companies and see them evolve. However, to ensure their long-term success, we must look beyond the day-to-day to ensure continued growth for years to come.
One of the key functions of human resource management is the process of identifying and preparing employees to assume new roles within your organization. While this can seem like a daunting task (and you may not have plans to leave your company anytime soon) succession planning is important to allow for growth and training to aid in the increase of available and capable individuals to assume new roles.
While it can be time consuming and require some strategic planning, there are many benefits to ensure succession planning is practiced within your company. Let’s dive into just four of them:
- You will increase the availability of management-ready individuals on your team.
As you begin your succession planning process, you may target specific people for certain roles. However, as you develop these individuals, leadership roles can easily be filled as you have a group of individuals who are ready and proven talent within the leadership space.
So, while they may not be in direct line to succeed you as the business owner, developing a talent pipeline within your organization ensures there are plenty of individuals who are ready to lead.
- You mitigate the risk of losing experienced corporate leaders.
One of the key benefits of succession planning is that it allows for training, engagement, and growth for current individuals within the organization. Showing current employees that they are valued and their growth is an important consideration goes a long way in retention. Not to mention it shows them how valued they are to the company.
- You will spend less on the external search for and development of candidates.
We all know that the cost of hiring is expensive. A strong succession plan — as we’ve discussed in the previous two points — can and should be about developing your internal team. If you are working to build strong leaders within your organization who can step up and ultimately fill your shoes someday, you’re less likely to have to search beyond the walls of your business for your replacement.
Thereby, investing in your current employees reduces the financial resources for an external job search.
- You can lean on your HR department to establish formal procedures to support the process of selecting top and middle management.
By planning ahead, your HR team can establish formal processes to support the selection of candidates. These processes allow for commitment and proper vetting of all qualified individuals.
Succession planning plays an important role in every business and should sit at the heart of your company’s objectives. By spending a little bit of time now, the future success of your business is increased with the sharing of knowledge, and development of future leaders.
Interested in learning more about Nationwide Marketing Group’s business continuity program? Reach out to Rick Bellows, manager of business continuity at Nationwide, at rick.bellows@nationwidegroup.org.
