Succession planning – what are you doing about it?

Photo courtesy of CJS*64 "Man with a camera"(CC No Derivatives)

This is a question we ask a lot to organisations we work with. It applies to all industries, but one you might not have thought of is in the trades. So if you look after – or are involved with organising lots of tradespeople – like a housing association or a council department, we’d like to know what you’re doing about succession planning.

What is Succession Planning?

Here’s what we mean: All of the trades are physically demanding as they might involve being on your feet all day or kneeling down for long periods of time. Others need you to do lots of heavy lifting, reaching and stretching, and going up and down ladders. They all take their toll on your body and it sometimes means people can’t do certain parts of their jobs as they get older.

When this happens, it’s not unusual for these jobs to be given to younger colleagues, who might feel they’ve been given the short end of the stick. They don’t want to do it and don’t see why they should just because their older workmate can’t anymore.

At this point a decision has to be made by managers or directors. Should they get rid of these older workers now they’re not as capable of doing their job as they used to be? Or should they keep them on with a slightly changed role as they’ve got loads of experience you can’t replace that easily?

Professional Footballers – the perfect Succession Plan

A good analogy is professional football. Once age catches up with players and they can’t do things on the field as they could before, they often play matches less often, change position or play in a slightly differently way before becoming coaches or managers, where they can pass their experience and knowledge on to younger players. In some ways it’s the perfect succession planning model.

Of course, the average plumber, electrician or plasterer doesn’t earn the astronomical wages of a footballer or manager and has to keep working for a long time until they can afford to retire. That’s something else to think about too – today’s workers are expected to work longer than ever before. They need to adapt and it’s often up to managers, directors, HR departments to recognise this and move people accordingly. Trades are affected more than office workers where there’s not as much physicality involved, and will often face the biggest change.

So if you’re one of the managers, directors or HR persons mentioned in this blog, what are you doing about succession planning in your organisation? There’s no right or wrong way to do it, but you definitely need to start thinking about doing it, especially if you’ve got people who’ve been with you for ages, and can’t do what they used to quite as well. Their experience is often priceless and you can’t afford to lose it.

Tell us your experiences of succession planning and how you managed to do it successfully (or not).