Succession Planning Process For Nurses

1 INTRODUCTION - SUCCESSION PLANNING PROCESS FOR NURSES
Succession planning (SP) is the plan an organization develops to meet its most critical employment needs, and the plan an organization employs to fill its most critical leadership and professional positions. It is the ongoing, purposeful, and systematic identification of qualified and appropriate successors to leadership, with a commitment to assessing, developing, and investing in organizational leadership to enhance performance, development, and preparedness. A current nursing leadership crisis exists in health care and warrants deliberate succession planning efforts. This paper sets forth a process for succession planning in nursing management and includes professional and career development,
nursing education, future needs of nursing competencies for nurse managers, vision and planning, communication, motivation and encouragement, teamwork and assessment and evaluation. Ineffective or nonexistent healthcare succession planning has the potential to heighten the nursing leadership crisis. SP requires putting the right people on the bus, getting the wrong people off the bus, and positioning the right people in the right seats. SP is having the right people in the right place at the right time. 2 SUCCESSION PLANNING

Succession planning is the plan an organization develops to meet its most critical employment needs.
Succession planning (SP) is the plan an organization employs to fill its most critical leadership and professional positions (Huang, 2001). It is the ongoing, purposeful, and systematic identification of qualified and appropriate successors to leadership, with a commitment to assessing, developing, and investing in organizational leadership to enhance performance, development, and preparedness (Kim, 2003; McDonald, 2006). Michelson (2006), SP requires putting the right people on the bus, getting the wrong people off the bus, and positioning the right people in the right seats (Michelson, 2006). SP is simply having the right people in the right place at the right time (Conger & Fulmer, 2003; Rothwell,
2005).
Healthcare leadership succession planning currently lags behind other industries. Seventy percent of hospitals report an absence of succession planning. Effective nurse managers require emotional and cultural intelligence, financial acumen, and good communication skills; however, opportunities to acquire these skills are limited. Nurse managers are traditionally selected based on clinical skill and often lack the formal education and support needed for successful leadership transitions (Fennimore & Wolf, 2011, Sanford, 2011).

3 OBJECTIVES

A current nursing leadership crisis exists in health care and warrants deliberate succession planning efforts.
Ineffective or nonexistent healthcare succession planning has the potential to heighten the nursing leadership crisis. Thirty-eight percent of the healthcare succession planning efforts are focused on top-level senior executives, primarily in the “C-suite,” such as chief executive officers (CEO), chief nursing officers, and chief financial officers (Garman & Tyler, 2007). However, best practice specifies multilayered succession planning models to include all key leadership and management positions (National Center for Healthcare Leadership [NCHL], 2005).
One of the first stages in succession planning is to develop succession objectives. Good succession planning objectives fills management positions with high- quality people who have been groomed to fill the vacancies. The implementation of succession planning objectives does not depend only on leaders or managers, as the responsibility is shared with the organization and its systems for staff development (Hosis et. al.,
2012).
Preparing the next generation of nurse leaders and managers is nothing less than good strategy in implementing succession planning (Hosis et. al., 2012). These objectives require identification of potential leadership ability in a number of people across all nursing departments, rather than grooming one person in each department (Hosis et. al., 2012). This process will enable the organization to provide a group of talented people who are well prepared for their future role when vacancies occur. Succession planning in nursing management includes but is not limited to professional and career development, nursing education, future needs of nursing competencies for nurse managers, vision and planning, communication, motivation and encouragement, teamwork and assessment and evaluation (Hosis et. al., 2012).