Succession Planning for Your Club/Society
What is Succession Planning?
Succession planning is about looking at where your club is now and where you’d like it to be and what you can put in place to help achieve your club’s main aims and objectives. It’s used to help find your club’s new executive committee members and ensure they have the knowledge and skills to step into positions when your committee members move on, so your club is not left struggling.
Simple steps to succession planning
- Look at your club’s current position (what it needs (skills or knowledge gaps), main committee roles and any anticipated vacancies)
- What skills do your committee members need to fill those main roles on your committee?
- Consider those skills and look for potential members to fill any vacant roles
- Work with those identified members to prepare them for roles within the club
How does this help your club/society?
- By enabling your club to share duties so it doesn’t fall back on one or two people
- Committee members get a smooth handover
- Committee positions look more appealing
- Helps your club/society achieve its aims and objectives
A lot of clubs/societies’ executives stay in their roles a lot longer than they originally intended to because it’s difficult to attract new committee members as no one wants to step into their roles as it can seem daunting. Sometimes, when they leave, the club/society falls apart .
You may have someone keen to step in, but they may find it overwhelming as they don’t have the knowledge or skills to perform the required duties and that’s where succession planning comes in!
Succession planning is great because if your club/society is run well and achieving its aims and objectives, it will attract members and some will want to be more involved in the running of the club/society and they will also bring some great new ideas with them.
The TUSA holds a Student Leadership Conference in November each year to help clubs & societies learn leadership skills and to equip them with the knowledge to run a great club/ society!