Succession Planning

Who’s next? Planning ahead for the future is a crucial part of being an EMS manager and leader. Within your organization, it’s important to be able to delegate tasks, assign responsibilities, and prepare your service for your eventual departure…whether it’s sudden or planned.

So, who’s next in your organization? Is there a plan, an organizational structure, a schematic of some sort to determine who can fill a position if it becomes vacant?

Even in organizations with one manager, one full-time employee, or one boss, it’s important to have an interim plan in place in the event that a transition of power is necessary. This succession plan may not only be necessary in the event of a resignation or retirement from your service, but also if the person filling a position is away on vacation or on another form of leave.

Having a succession plan in place may also act as a form of a chain of command for your service. Having such a structure in place can assure that an appropriate span of control is followed, it can work as a flow-chart for problem-solving, and it can also function as a resource to help delegate responsibilities.

Looking toward the future, succession planning can help to fill any “gaps” that your service may encounter in the upcoming years. For instance, in services with many tenured employees/members that are nearing their retirement or departure, it is important to recognize the need to prepare future leaders to step-up to the challenges and promotions ahead of them. This may mean that your service may have to focus more of its professional development, leadership training, and efforts for retention, on a particular tenure demographic of your organization sooner, rather than later. Such efforts now, therefore, will lead to an easier transition in the future.

Focusing on the service’s EMS Director, who’s #2 in your organization? Who’s in charge when the boss is out of town? Who’s in charge if #1 is no longer able to be #1 tomorrow?

Larger services will often have some form of Deputy Director, or Assistant Chief, already in place in their organizational structure. For those that don’t, however, it’s imperative that they start looking at this structural change, or upgrade. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to hire another full-time person, or create a new management position. Instead, it simply means that you need to sit down with your current staff, your managing body (such as a Board of Directors), and potential candidates to choose will would be the immediate/interim person in charge if such a circumstance should arise.

Succession planning doesn’t have to be complex; it doesn’t have to be difficult; it can be simplistic and thorough at the same time. Working with others within your service can be one easy way to determine what your service’s next steps would be; working with a consultant to devise a succession plan may be another independent option.

In the end, simply hoping that nothing happens isn’t good enough of a “life insurance policy” for your organization. Succession planning is necessary in order to assure that your service can continue to run smoothly, as well as function efficiently, in the event of the absence of one of its management members.