Key Takeaways:
- Shift your focus from traditional succession planning to workforce resiliency to help reduce disruption and strengthen operations across all roles.
- Use a risk-based approach to identify skill gaps, prioritize high-impact positions, and guide where to invest your time and resources.
- Build long-term stability through cross-training, standard operating procedures, and transition planning to reduce single points of failure across your organization.
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If you work in state and local government, you’ve likely heard the term “succession planning” more times than you can count. And, if you’re being honest, it probably doesn’t spark much enthusiasm — not because the goal isn’t important, but because the term itself carries baggage.
For many organizations, succession planning feels like brussels sprouts: something you know is good for you, but not something you’re excited to serve. It’s often interpreted as identifying a single successor for a leadership role, creating narrow development tracks, and placing pressure on a small group of employees.
But that’s not what your organization actually needs. What you’re really trying to build is “workforce resiliency” — the ability to maintain operations, preserve institutional knowledge, and adapt when vacancies occur. So instead of reworking succession planning into something more palatable, it’s worth calling it what it is and approaching it differently.
How Workforce Resiliency Planning Is Different Than Traditional Succession Planning
Traditional succession planning tends to focus on top leadership roles. Workforce resiliency planning expands that lens. You’re not just preparing for the next city manager or department head. You’re strengthening your organization from entry-level positions through executive leadership.
Consider this: if you have persistent vacancies in frontline roles — like utility meter readers or permitting staff — your ability to generate revenue or deliver core services can be disrupted quickly. These aren’t executive roles, but they carry operational weight.
Workforce resiliency planning recognizes that reality. It prioritizes building a broad base of skills, knowledge, and redundancy across your organization so you’re not relying on a single individual in any one position.
Build a Collective Knowledge Base, Not a Single Successor
Instead of identifying the “next in line”, workforce resiliency planning focuses on expanding your internal talent pool. The goal is to:
- Develop multiple employees who can “step-up” when vacancies occur
- Reduce single points of failure
- Strengthen both technical and soft skills across departments
This approach aligns well with the public sector environment, where transparency, fairness, and structured hiring processes matter. Rather than narrowing opportunities, you’re creating them — internally and externally.
How to Take a Risk-Based Approach to Workforce Planning
To make workforce resiliency actionable, you need structure. A risk-based framework helps you prioritize where to focus your time and resources.
Step 1: Identify Skill Gaps Across Your Organization
Start with a workshop-style assessment involving department leadership.
Ask:
- What core technical and soft skills are required at each level — entry, supervisor, manager, and executive?
- Where are the gaps in those skills today?
This step shifts the conversation away from individual employees and toward positions and functions. You’re evaluating your organizational infrastructure (not just your people).
The outcome is a clearer view of where your workforce is strong, where it’s stretched thin, and where development efforts should focus.
Step 2: Identify What’s Getting in the Way
Once you know where the gaps are, the next question is: what’s preventing you from closing them?
Workforce resiliency depends on alignment across three levels:
- Governance: You need leadership support, clear prioritization, and appropriate resources. This includes budget, time, and a consistent message that workforce development matters.
- Framework: Your HR function plays a central role here. This includes aligning hiring strategies, reducing time-to-fill, building talent pipelines (such as university partnerships), and gathering feedback to refine your approach.
- Implementation: This is where plans succeed or stall. Managers are responsible for coaching employees, supporting development, encouraging cross-training, and following through on workforce initiatives.
If any one of these layers is weak, your efforts will struggle to gain traction. Identifying those obstacles early allows you to make targeted adjustments.
Step 3 (Optional): Prioritize High-Risk Positions
If your organization is open to it, you can take your analysis further by identifying high-risk positions.
This step can be sensitive in some environments, particularly when it involves retirement forecasting or workforce data. If that’s the case, consider it optional — but valuable when feasible.
To assess risk, evaluate factors such as:
- Vacancy rates over the past three years
- Time-to-hire for each position
- Retirement eligibility trends
- Impact on daily operations
- Impact on revenue, financial oversight, or compliance
- Alignment with department and organization-wide goals
Score each factor on a simple scale (for example, low to high). The positions with the highest combined scores represent your greatest risk.
These are the roles where workforce resiliency efforts can have the most immediate impact.
Step 4: Build Redundancy Through SOPs and Cross-Training
With your priorities defined, the next step is execution.
Start by documenting standard operating procedures (SOPs) for high-risk positions — especially those with single points of failure. Then identify backups and begin cross-training.
This does two things:
1. Preserves institutional knowledge
2. Creates flexibility when vacancies occur
Over time, expand this effort to lower-risk areas. If you didn’t complete the risk assessment in Step 3, begin with essential operations and roles that only one person currently understands.
Step 5: Standardize Transition Planning
Even with strong workforce resiliency, transitions will happen. When they do, you want structure — not guesswork.
A transition plan document helps capture:
- Key responsibilities and workflows
- Ongoing projects and deadlines
- Required technical skills
- Identified backups or cross-trained staff
Ideally, employees update this annually so it’s ready when needed. This reduces disruption and helps you identify any remaining gaps before someone leaves.
Move Beyond the Label and Build What You Actually Need
Succession planning, as a term, often implies hierarchy, selectivity, and rigidity. Workforce resiliency planning emphasizes adaptability, development, and continuity.
That distinction matters.
When you focus on building a resilient workforce:
- You reduce the operational impact of vacancies
- You strengthen your internal talent pipeline
- You create a culture centered on growth and shared knowledge
In other words, you stop trying to make succession planning more appealing and instead build something better suited to how your organization actually operates. Rather than trying to make brussels sprouts more appetizing, you’re offering cookies: something people are ready to engage with from the start.
How MGO Can Help You Build Workforce Resiliency
Turning workforce resiliency from an idea into a structured, repeatable process takes time, alignment, and the right framework. That’s where our State and Local Government Consulting team comes in.
We work with you to assess your current workforce risks, identify gaps across roles and departments, and develop practical implementation plans that align with how your organization operates. We focus on helping you move from planning to execution — so your organization is better prepared for workforce changes before they happen.
If you’re ready to take a more proactive, structured approach to workforce resiliency, reach out to our team today to start the conversation.