Building Bench Strength: Smart Companies Plan Ahead
In sports, a team’s success is often tied to its bench strength, the players who can step in seamlessly when a starter is sidelined. Football teams don’t take the field with just one quarterback or linemen, and baseball teams rely on pinch hitters and relief pitchers. The same concept applies in business: bench strength refers to the capabilities and readiness of internal talent to move into key roles when needed.
This is critically important. Every organization faces inevitable change…whether from turnover, restructuring, retirements, or health-related absences.
When a key position becomes vacant, whether in leadership, management, or operations, your business needs to have a ready successor or a clear plan to fill the gap without disruption.
“Knowing where to build a bench lineup in your organization requires a systematic effort to ensure continuity,” says Gary Bozza, President of P3 Printing, Packaging & Paper Executive Recruiters. “The goal is to develop knowledge and intellectual capital for the future while encouraging individual advancement.”
Bozza emphasizes the importance of identifying mission-critical roles, especially those tied to your competitive advantage, industry specialization, or positions with long learning curves or heavy experiential knowledge. He offers four workforce planning suggestions to help your company prepare when it’s time to call on your “bench strength”:
1. Define Your Strategic Direction
Start with your mission and vision. Is your current team capable of delivering on your goals? Revisit your three- and five-year strategic plans and evaluate your talent accordingly.
Assess where you are today (“As Is”) versus where you want to be (“To Be”). From there, outline a game plan that includes actionable steps, responsibilities, and deadlines to close the talent gap. Encourage each department to identify critical functions and develop their own continuity plans. Fostering strategic thinking now helps employees grow into future leaders and strengthens your current team’s performance.
2. Prioritize Succession Planning
Succession planning isn’t just for the C-suite. Yes, it’s vital for anticipating leadership retirements, but it’s equally important because your highest performers are also the most likely to be recruited elsewhere, especially in today’s competitive talent market and shortage of younger workers entering the Printing, Packaging & Paper industries.
Identify high-potential employees early and develop them deliberately. At the same time, evaluate external talent pools to ensure you’re not limited by what’s already in-house. Formalize your evaluation process so that team members can express their interests, strengths, and development areas. This insight allows you to truly measure your bench strength and identify where key roles have capable backups or critical gaps.
3. Make Knowledge Sharing a Cultural Norm
Encourage employees to participate in team projects, task forces, cross-functional training, and mentoring opportunities. This not only prepares others to step up when needed, but it also fosters collaboration and innovation.
A knowledge-sharing culture breaks down silos and builds a better culture and more connected workforce. Now that Millennials have become a greater majority in the labor force, they gravitate toward companies that offer mentorship and open access to learning from more experienced colleagues.
4. Don’t Do It Alone
If you don’t have a succession plan, or your internal bench lacks depth, consider partnering with a search consultant who understands your industry. They’ll help you access qualified, often passive candidates you might not be able to reach on your own.
Also, take a hard look at your hiring processes. Are they outdated or too slow? A 2015 approach won’t win in 2026 fast-moving, employee driven market. We have experienced more candidates with multiple offers, ghosting employers (and recruiters), and are open to leaving a company withing weeks of starting for another offer. Be willing to adapt and always be networking (and interview) with top talent, even if you don’t have an immediate need. You might uncover someone so valuable that it makes sense to create a role for them before it becomes critical.
“Clearly, building sustainable bench strength must be part of an organization’s overall talent acquisition strategy, with career planning woven into the process,” Bozza says. “It sets a course for growth, smooths transitions, and ensures you’re developing the next generation of leaders. To stay ahead of the game, leadership must keep a constant pulse on current and future business needs and make workforce planning part of the company culture. By doing this, organizations ensure they have the right talent, in the right roles, at the right time with a committed bench ready to keep the team on top for seasons to come.”
About the AuthorGary Bozza is the founder of P3 Executive Recruiters, established in 1997. Recognized for his ability to get results, he has been building high-performance leadership teams for four decades on both hiring and recruiting sides. Gary and his team are dedicated to helping Owners, CEOs, Presidents and Private Equity Firms maximize the effectiveness of human capital resources, drive profitable growth, while building enterprise value. Their proven and rigorous search methodology consistently produces timely, strong results. They were recently recognized by Forbes as one of “America’s Best Recruiting Firms”.