By Jennifer Goode | Senior STC Member
Creating a succession plan will reduce workplace stress and ensure business continuity for the next personnel change in your organization
Personnel change is inevitable in the workplace, but nowadays it seems especially common. Take the Great Resignation of 2021, for instance. In mid-October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 4.3 million Americans had left their jobs in August of that year.1 That’s 2.9 percent of the American workforce, or roughly 1 in 30 employees. Vacancies were turning up at small businesses and large corporations alike, leaving leaders scrambling to keep operations moving forward.
The workforce has always been an ever-moving collection of employees moving from one organization to another.
The Great Resignation simply highlighted a lesser-known weak point for organizations: being prepared for massive personnel changes at any time. Gone are the days of life-long loyalty to a single company. The uncomfortable truth, of course, is that every employee is eventually going to leave their job, on average about every four years, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2020.2 To minimize disruptions, we need to prepare ourselves and our teams for the inevitable.
What is Succession Planning?
Succession planning is the process of preparing for the changes in people’s roles within an organization. Succession requires us to assess, address, and respond to a situation or change in the organization, all while keeping the business going. Roles still need to be performed when people leave, and succession planning ensures that those standard operations can continue in a nearly seamless manner.
If you’re feeling like this is too large of a project that will take too much time, don’t be intimidated. Thorough succession planning can be a big task, so start small and build out complete documentation over time. Invite the team to work on the succession plan together to build momentum and capacity during the process. When the entire team collaborates, everyone can understand the interrelationships and interdependencies of everyone’s work, making it easier to pick up the slack in a transition. And remember to keep things in perspective: any amount of documentation is better than none at all when a team member has to leave their post.
Completing these activities (or leading your team through them) can drastically reduce the stress of the unknown, should someone need to leave for the short or long term. They also ensure that someone else on the team (or a new employee) could step in and cover roles and responsibilities with relative clarity and ease.
Integrating the Documentation into a Succession Strategy
After you have documented each team member’s roles, resources, and responsibilities, begin to build a more formal strategy for how positions will be covered. You can cross-train employees, ensuring all roles are covered by at least two people on your team. Plan to hire replacements prior to team members leaving, if possible, to allow for on-the-job training by the outgoing expert. Create a shared resource location where employees can maintain and update their documentation and electronic resources.
Implementing Your Succession Plan
Of course, you may never feel adequately prepared for a personnel change. But your resources, your plan, and your team will support operations during the time of transition. When the personnel change actually occurs, stay focused on your team and lead through the change using these four strategies:
- Communication: Communication is key to letting people know that a personnel change is anticipated. Consider who needs to know about the change, how early and frequent updates need to be, and what delivery formats (written, oral, or otherwise) are preferred for the involved stakeholders. Openly communicating and addressing the pending change is key to having the right people involved when the actual change occurs.
- Assessment: Taking note of the organizational tasks, processes, and functions before the personnel change can be very helpful in dealing with the staff transition. What tasks have already been done, and which ones still need to take place? Identify the resources — people, equipment, time, money, and so forth — that are necessary to complete outstanding operations. Continual assessment during a change helps organizational team members keep a pulse on the situation and react appropriately.
- Leadership: Guide and manage the change responsibly, enabling your team by keeping them focused on the big picture or a long-term goal. If necessary, set up a transition team or a key leader to oversee the transition from one employee to the next. Factor in extra time for existing team members to adapt, cover, and support the additional work of an absent employee or onboarding team member.
- Preparation: Exercise preparedness for the unexpected or inevitable changes in personnel. Actively consider what changes are likely in the near or distant future. Begin to collect documentation and align resources to support those eventual changes.
Final Thoughts
As organizations continue to deal with the latest personnel trends across multiple industries, they are also addressing the same changes they’ve always had to address: time off, sick leave, FMLA leave, retirement, promotion, transfers, resignations, and so on. Some changes are planned; others are surprises. Whether related to the Great Resignation of 2021 or not, employees will continue to move in and out of organizations over time. Regardless of cause, succession planning is an excellent way to prepare for personnel changes before they happen. Documenting key processes and integrating them into a strategic framework can reduce stress on team members and ensure ongoing business continuity when the next personnel change happens in your organization.
References
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary.” News release, October 12, 2021. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
- U.S. Bureau of Statistics. “Employee Tenure Summary.” News release, September 22, 2020. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm
JENNIFER GOODE, PhD, CPTC (jennifer@anypso.com) is a senior STC member and adjunct professor of technical communication at Mercer University in Macon, GA. With over 20 years of professional experience in government, non-profits, and for-profits, she also consults in the areas of instructional design and strategic human capital performance, measurement, and improvement.
