Succession Planning

This is the first of two tools which are designed to help guide the process of succession planning in relation to board members. Like the second, which relates to staff, it isn’t a rigid set of rules but designed to help you to ask the right questions. This one starts with making sure you understand what you already have – checking the terms of Board members to see what immediately may need to change and conducting a risk assessment. Getting this right is really important to make sure that all further steps are as well informed as possible.

The second main stage is to conduct a skills assessment to provide evidence on what skills may be missing and how a succession plan may need to incorporate those or different skills in future. 

After this, new board members will be recruited and then inducted. Once this has happened, they are into their core term before the whole process starts again, with them supported to end their time on the board positively.

Key executive/staff roles 

These guidance notes and the diagnostic tool are aimed both at Boards and senior teams. 

CEOs or similar present key succession ‘risks’ themselves at a time that they are ready to leave and also play an important role in thinking about and developing plans to ensure positive succession throughout key roles in the organisation. 

Succession planning is a key function but can often be neglected and happen on a reactive basis when someone is about to leave, or even has already left. This is going to be particularly pressing in some areas of specialist skills – for example safeguarding and finance. To reduce the risk of a short notice departure in areas like this:

• key information should be stored in a central accessible place, 
• a deputy should be identified where possible, 
• organisations should consider ‘twinning’ with another organisation to share these posts and expertise.

When facing reactive succession planning, some helpful questions an organisation could consider would be: 

1. If X left the organisation tomorrow, who would take responsibility for their role whilst a replacement is found? Do they have the skills, knowledge and expertise to do this?
2. How would we ensure our membership/participants/workforce were supported in this area of Governance during the time of absence? 
3. Do our workforce/membership/participants know what the process is when X is not present? How do we communicate this?

A more proactive view of succession planning, including identifying risks and the kinds of skills that will be needed in future is an important part of an effective organisation. Developing proactive succession planning is key to an effective and well governed organisation.

Here are some key questions senior members of staff and Boards can explore when discussing how to develop a succession plan: 

1. What trends exist in the organisation – how long typically do people stay, what are the factors that influence departure, and can these be better understood and planned for? 
2. Does the organisation have an up to date skills assessment of staff to help you to identify current gaps and where the greatest risks may lie? How is this used? 
3. The ‘leaving conversation’ can be particularly hard in staff roles, but how has the senior team and Board thought carefully about how it can create an environment where mature and respectful conversations about future plans can take place? 
4. What current networks does the organisation have to find future staff members? How can the Board reach new people beyond current contacts? 
5. What internal structures/opportunities could be used to better develop people already within the staff team (or acting as volunteers) who may fill key roles in future? 
6. How does the organisation currently link discussions around succession planning with best practice (as well as specific requirements) around equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)? 
7. Does the loss of key staff members and their skills currently feature on the Board’s risk register? How is succession planning factored into wider discussions about risk? 
8. Is staff survey data reviewed regularly to track emerging risks and to put succession plans in place? What steps are taken to act on identified trends or concerns? 

Once the person is in role, there should be a continuous process of support. Both in terms of general support but also formal performance management and appraisal. For those in senior roles, they should be thinking about the needs of their team, how it might grow and how roles might need to be refreshed and replaced as part of a succession plan.

The next stage after this, as the candidate is ideally performing well in role is to keep tracking skills across the team and to ensure that good CPD plans are in place. Alongside this, good quality, open and mature conversations about future career plans should be happening and where necessary or possible, a pipeline of strong future candidates should be built. 

Related to this, another key step is to develop a bespoke recruitment plan and to build a network to attract strong candidate – including those from outside the sector and from outside Wales.

The next core step is the recruitment process, as part of which the person leaving should also be supported to have a positive exit including a formal exit interview and for lessons that emerge from this process to be applied. 

Finally, and sitting across all stages is the need for a comprehensive EDI plan and for this to be integrated at every stage.

If you would like to discuss succession planning, or potential further support, please contact the Governance Team at Sport Wales.

The guidance within this page was produced by James Allen at Counsel Ltd.