Short-term Succession Planning

Being prepared for a sudden transition in faculty, staff and leadership is critical to keeping things calm during uncertain times. Here are a few tips and reminders to ensure a smooth transition following a colleague's unexpected departure or hiatus -- all before you contact headhunters, form executive search committees and more. With a list of hiring resources and interim plans, your team will feel confident and prepared.

Do's

• Pre-plan Hiring Steps
  Create a list of steps, recruiters, job listing sites, committees and other strategies you need to implement for each critical role ahead of time. Doing this pre-planning will let you hit the ground running.

• Identify Interims
  For all critical roles in your institution, identify the person or role to serve the opening as an interim.

• Share The Plan With Interims and IT Team
  Your interims will need to work with the current job holders to get a good sense of the role's essential responsibilities, including gaining access to critical logins, tools, and reports. By sharing the plan with your IT team ahead of time, you will give them the information they need to quickly and correctly forward and redirect communications as required.

• Update Plan Annually
  Look at these plans to ensure that any re-org or staffing changes have been accounted for and your team is prepared for the upcoming year.

Don'ts

• Choose Favorites or Make the Process Political
  Filling key positions with unqualified personnel, even for the short term, can do damage to morale and operations. Select interims by relevant skills and experience.

• Limit Planning to the President and Chancellor Roles
  Your executive and senior-level positions have many essential responsibilities that need to be covered as quickly as possible. Don't overlook these roles.

• Leave HR or President to Develop these Plans Alone
  By forming a team to perform this succession planning, you will build a sounder plan and your faculty and staff will likely support it to a greater degree.

• Ignore Talent Gaps
  If your team is struggling to identify an interim for a role, it might be time to upskill or coach one or more of your colleagues to get them to the level they need to take on additional responsibilities.

Over the next couple of months, sit down with your team and complete this prep work. You will be ready for, if and when, the dreaded late-night text comes in asking for an emergency team meeting to discuss a colleague's immediate departure.

To learn more about what to do when the departure is planned, read this opinion piece, "Another Wave of Presidential Departures?", Inside Higher Ed recently published by L. Jay Lemons. If you have more do's and don'ts or have questions about our recommendations, let us know at recruit@insidehighered.com. We are here to help and we always like to learn more!