Pros and Cons of Succession Planning

As baby-boomers head for retirement, companies are starting to realise, sometimes belatedly, that a fair amount of corporate knowledge goes with them. Who is going to fill those shoes and effect a smooth transition? Leaving aside family-owned businesses, there are both pros and cons of succession-planning in an organisation.

Pros
• Great way to make sure there is a smooth transfer from person to person.

• The person stepping into the role has been trained on the job and knows the organisation – no lead-in time for orientation.

• Corporate knowledge is not lost

• Better the devil you know – you know what you are getting with the internal successor.

• Can be a great motivator for the person chosen as a successor – they know there is a promotion waiting for them if they do the right thing. This may be a great way to keep a specific talent with the organisation.

Cons
• The person identified for succession now may not be the best person for the job in five years’ time. Another person more suited may have joined the organisation.

• The job and its skill requirements may change between when you decide upon a successor and when they are ready to move into the job.

• There may be a negative effect on other employees not chosen for the role – if there is no possibility of promotion they may go elsewhere.

• The chosen successor may not be motivated to try hard but instead plot a “safe” course, because they know that providing they don’t make a mistake, they will get the promotion.

• You miss out on the opportunity to recruit new blood and new ideas into the organisation.

• If the chosen successor goes elsewhere or proves not to be the right person – then what?

• An employee choosing their successor will have a subjective opinion of potential candidates – and may also have an ulterior motive or hidden agenda.

• When the change-over happens, it doesn’t look like an open merit-based, fair and equitable process for appointing the successor. This may be a negative for other staff, other candidates, shareholders and clients.

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Life and death in the office

I blogged recently on a study linking workplace rudeness with lowered work performance. This study demonstrated that you didn’t need to be the actual victim of the rudeness, you only had to witness it happening to someone else and it affected the ability to perform higher order tasks.

Well, hard on the heels of that one, I have been sent two more studies, and reminded of another.

The following Stress Reduction Kit has been provided in case you need it.

1. Professor Arie Shirom at Tel Aviv University led a team of researchers tracking 820 participants over twenty years. What they found was, after controlling for a number of health risk factors such as smoking, the risk of death strongly correlated with the perceived niceness of co-workers. The nicer you felt your co-workers were to you, the lower your mortality rate. The more obnoxious they were, your risks went up. This was published in the American Psychological Association journal, but for non-members, access the information here.

2. The same source also makes reference to the rather famous (in public health circles) Whitehall Study. This was another 20 years study conducted on 28,000 public servants in the UK. It found that risk of a number of diseases and premature death was correlated with being lower down the pecking order. They hypothesized that this was related to the degree of negative stress – stress where the person had no control over effecting the solution. This was more prevalent at the bottom of the ladder than the top of the ladder, where there might be a high degree of stress but there was also power and control to do something about it.

3. And from an American Psychological Association conference – research that workplace incivility is on the rise. The paper presented stated that between 75 and 80% of people have experienced incivility at work, and that it is on the rise.

Is this your experience of the workplace?

Feel free to print and use the stress kit provided free of charge to you at the top of the blog. We are happy to be of assistance.

Alternately you might like to read about the benefits of red wine and dark chocolate.

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