Telling your team
When and how to tell your staff about succession plans, and what to agree about their positions.
When and how to tell your staff about succession plans, and what to agree about their positions.
Staff who have worked with you for years notice changes in your routine, such as meetings you have not mentioned. They will draw their own conclusions while they wait to be told.
Staff usually have four questions, roughly in this order:
The fourth matters most, because it decides whether they believe your answers to the other three.
You cannot answer the first question until the arrangement is agreed, and the arrangement takes months. Telling people early means telling them something incomplete. Telling them late means they may hear it from somebody else first.
Separate what you know from what you do not. You know your own intention, and you know roughly when. You do not know the details. Tell them the first and be open about the second.
Tell them you are starting to plan the next few years, that nothing is agreed, and that their position will be part of the plan.
In a conventional sale, staff are reviewed for duplication after completion, because that is when the acquirer starts looking at cost. By then you have no role and little say in the terms.
Whatever route you take, the position of your people belongs in the terms, agreed before anything is signed, in writing. Under Securo it is one of the first things worked out, for the practical reason that some firms bring their whole team across, some bring nobody and hand administration over entirely, and the two need different arrangements from the start.
Sometimes a younger adviser at the firm could take it on. Test that option before looking outside.
The obstacle is often funding. A capable adviser in their thirties does not have the capital to buy a practice, and vendor finance over several years leaves you carrying the risk of a business you no longer control.
Find this out early. It is much easier to design an arrangement that includes them at the start than to find in year three that the plan you assumed does not exist.
When to tell clients, what to say, and how the timing affects whether they stay.
Read it
How to reduce owner dependency, which lowers a valuation and can be reduced with one to three years of work.
Read it
How succession options differ for directly authorised firms and for appointed representatives of a network.
Read itSteven Bates, Director of Advisory at Equity & General, takes the first call with every adviser. Ring him on 020 8396 0486 or send a short note about your firm.