Succession planning is common in many industries — finance, law, education — but it is especially critical in hospitals to ensure the continuity of high-quality patient care. To make sure your team doesn’t miss a beat when leadership transitions occur, consider adopting these five best practices for hospital succession planning.
#1 – Look Out for Leadership Potential
It’s never too early to identify your hospital’s future leaders. Keep an eye out for exceptional team members who not only produce high-quality work, but also contribute to your hospital’s culture. Doctors, nurses and staff members who are eager to learn, suggest process improvements, and support the learning and growth of fellow team members are great candidates for leadership development and support.
#2 – Make Capturing Institutional Knowledge Automatic
Your doctors, nurses and staff are walking around with critical information about how your hospital runs, but often, this information only lives with the individuals, rather than an accessible, centralized resource. To prevent the risk of critical processes, systems and facts leaving with your leaders, build in ways to capture institutional knowledge on the job. This may involve investing in a more sophisticated information management system, introducing team members to note taking and sharing habits, and ensuring that employees are cross-trained so that no one person is critical to a particular job function or duty.
#3 – Start the Conversation with Senior Leaders Early
Just as it’s never too early to look for talent, it’s also never too early to talk to your current leaders about their plans for the future. Engage senior leaders in conversations about their long-term career goals, their ideal retirement age, and other factors that may affect the time they spend in their job. In addition to discussing specifics, make sure to encourage them to mentor and coach current staff members. The more that your leaders can train current staff members in their philosophies today, and share their wisdom while still on the job, the more likely that your hospital will navigate a future leadership transition with clarity and ease.
#4 – Create a Clear and Transparent Process
Succession planning can be stressful, especially when there are so many factors to consider — in addition to traditional concerns about continuity of patient care and preserving your hospital’s strategic goals, you’re also thinking about people-oriented concerns, including fairness, equality, team culture, and office politics. To avoid any questions about fairness or legitimacy, communicate about how your hospital handles succession planning early and often. Giving employees clarity upfront on the leadership advancement process at your hospital will help you avoid team conflict and instill trust in your workers that they are operating in a just, equitable, values-based ecosystem.
#5 – Balance Culture Fit with New Perspectives
It’s true that culture fit is uniquely important in a hospital setting. However, it’s also true that new perspectives can enrich your team and significantly improve the quality of care being delivered to your patients. New perspectives from candidates who come from a variety of backgrounds ensures that you’re thinking about multiple populations and considering all viewpoints. Every leadership transition is a chance to bring new voices to the forefront and change medicine for the better. Don’t miss this opportunity to consider the value of a diverse team of hospital leaders who bring a variety of backgrounds, passion areas, and life experiences to the table.
Building a culture of smooth succession planning isn’t always easy, but it does ensure that patients will continue to receive high quality care no matter what the future brings. By staying prepared for the unexpected, you’ll always be one step ahead and able to navigate any unforeseen leadership changes with confidence.