Insights
Albright Life Sciences: A Pragmatic Approach to Succession Planning
Succession is not a series of actions – it is a way to think about the business.
Succession planning is an integral part of the overall workforce planning within successful organizations. In 2014, the 1.000 biggest companies in Denmark (including family-owned companies) – encompassing 1% of all companies in Denmark – employed over 50% of all employees within the private sector. In fact, when looking exclusively at family-owned businesses, 40-60.000 of them employ approx. 1.3 million people in Denmark. However, only 30% of these family-owned businesses are expected to survive on to their third generation of family ownership. Why? Mainly due to a demonstrable lack of structured succession planning. In fact, most companies rely on the once-a-year executive review to generate their succession insights, all the while that will not suffice. According to the leadership guru, John Burdett – if the dialogue regarding the individual’s succession within the organization is not ongoing, and if that dialogue is not a deeply embedded central pillar of the organization’s approach to talent management, then the overall talent management process of that organization is seriously flawed revealing that critical business risks are not being managed.
Everything suggested so far, leads to one key question; “How good is the succession process in your organization?”.
According to Albright Life Sciences, here are five key perspectives on succession planning:
- Focus on mission critical positions
- Perform an internal and external mapping process
- Ensure a proper "fit" between the successing candidate and the role/company in question
- Ensure a proper internal onboarding of the successing candidate
- Plan also for the worst case