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Shelter Chieza Change Management
Imagine you are recruiting your company’s finance manager and you are hoping to find that one person your company will place hope in during these trying economic times. I am a firm believer that promoting leaders from within the company is better than searching for outside talent.

My experience in management has helped me to appreciate that there are leadership opportunists that are looking at every opportunity to move up the ladder or to even becoming the next chief executive.

I often get uncomfortable when an individual shifts from one job to another. In most cases, they are looking for one-term jobs and often leave organisations to fill the gaps they would have created.

Our employees are so hungry for motivation. Hiring internally is a direct and deliberate decision to develop existing employees.

Employees are a very observant and optimistic lot, if you promote Martin today, people will see that there are opportunities to advance.

And what have you done? Staff turnover will immediately go down and productivity and engagement will go up.

Remember any other investment you would have made in employees should be quantified if you are considering recruiting from within.

In this instance investment in development pays off as professionals stay with the organisation longer.

I am not arguing that promotions must just be a given. Employees have a right to progress along specific career paths during their careers, make them feel motivated.

Promotion is not always an upward path you can make a lateral move to position yourself for a later upward move.

I do agree that there are some unique instances when company really will need a highly skilled person that a company cannot fill from its own internal workforce.

We, however, must not overlook junior to mid-level candidates because they lack something that you can work with in terms of training.

After all, the high skilled individuals may not live up to expectations. Junior managers are often more excited to tackle new tasks — take advantage of that level of en- thusiasm.

They are often more willing and excited to make a lateral move in order to expand their skills set they are willing to get their hands dirty.

The junior managers often strive to push themselves on a day-to-day basis to grow into the role they were brought on.

Don’t relegate the more senior people though; it gives them an opportunity to mentor the new incoming junior manager who has been promoted.

By mentoring them, you are making them more involved in the recruitment process and it gives them a feeling of responsibility and to some cases a sense of indispensability.

For me succession planning often forms an important concept in an organisation’s activities. With succession planning you are deliberately engaging employees to fill in more challenging roles, for lateral moves or special projects.

Most small businesses or family owned businesses often collapse because of a lack of a solid succession plan upon the death or incapacitation of the senior member.

It’s usually most tiresome if it’s a family business that needs consultation and approval from each and every member.

As you start and grow your business, there is a lot of input required, most people would rather avoid the complication and painful process of planning for the future.

It usually involves the passing of the baton from the current founders of the business to the next generation.

However, people that value their business should look into the future and do a succession planning.

And so, some of us analysts have been wondering how Berkshire Hathaway had handled their succession plan issue after Warren Buffett announced his retirement from being a chief executive officer since 1970. Such shoes are so hard to fill but can never be achieved if there was no succession planning that had been put in place.

I believe the internal recruited has known and proven qualities as compared to the outside one.

The challenge that should be corrected in most companies is failure to grow and groom leaders and they eventually resort to searching for outside skill.

You may not be aware of it but many a times the skills you are looking for is inherent within the company.

Succession planning becomes an alternative for those companies that are struggling with that.

Unless you have seen an individual at work in their area, it is sometimes difficult for most HR people to be precise in their selection but recruitment has to be made anyway.

There is a danger of misfiring your true target and pay for an inexperienced and incompetent individual.

Till next week, may God richly bless you!

• Shelter Chieza is a Management Consultant. She can be contacted at [email protected]