Succession Planning in Accountancy

Accounting firms have never been as reliant on succession planning as they are right now. Just cast your mind back to the financial crisis and you’ll remember how up in the air each and every industry was. But with effective succession planning in place, that need not be the case in the future.

More than risk mitigation

The whole point of having succession planning as part and parcel of your overall business plan is to create a sense of confidence amongst your colleagues in the workplace. If your employees understand where they are heading in the future, surely they will be more motivated to step up to the plate and deliver on a daily basis? This strengthens the overall structure of your company and it is a common factor in UK accountancy firms today.

Long or short term?

Succession planning can work in both long and short term timespans and both of these will help to retain your key employees in your accounting firm. But on the whole, long term succession planning is where we should be concentrating our efforts. Consider the talent or lack of it at middle and senior manager levels and you’ll start to realise just how vital this strategy actually is. It does of course depend on the size and structure of your firm but where possible it would be better to develop your existing employees and reinforce your company’s loyalty instead of risking diluting the very same by employing external candidates?

When you initially recruit new employees, why not start as you mean to go on by developing the best candidates for the future accountancy roles? Instead of filling that hole in the future, you can already have a handle on who will be the best person for that job by following the codes set out by long term succession planning.