Succession planning involves several key decisions. There are many points to be considered:

Key points to designing a succession plan.

1: Evaluate existing employees and the current needs
-List all employees you have and their respective positions
-List your current hiring needs

2: Review those you can promote from your current employees.
-List the names of who could be promoted (and to what position) within the next 6 months time

3: Develop an action plan for each one of those who you can promote with their key deliverables clearly cut out.
-List the training needs before a promotion is possible
-Outline a basic plan for training on these critical tasks / skills that were identified
-Do a SWOT analysis for each one of them
-Rate each person's desire to be promoted (1-10)

Tips:

-Rework on your succession plan each quarter. This will give you a reassessment of hiring needs and also see the development of existing staff upon training. This will also give you a clear idea where you stand for succession.

-Do a succession plan even if you're fully staffed. You never know when someone will leave you, so you must be prepared for that.

If you identify that you need an "assistant manager" but currently believe that no one from within can be promoted within 6 months, you should focus your efforts on hiring someone who could fill that position sooner.

-Doing the 1-10 rating of desire to be promoted will help you assess who you should work with first if you have a few people to choose from.

If you can't rate the person because you don't know about their desire, then you need to have a casual conversation with them to help you determine their interest in growing within the company.

If you have someone who isn't interested in getting promoted, do not "force" the person. That's one benefit of a succession plan. It forces you to take a hard look at your team, who you have, and what to do as a result of your assessments.

- DeTimes