Approval Delegation when Manager hierarchy fails

Summary: Functional Automation when Manager is not present

Content (required): We are implementing Global project in 2 phases. There are employees of West already loaded in Production Environment, who have Managers in East (to be implemented next year) hence absent in the live environment. This is impacting many Approval rules and hierarchy dependencies.

Workaround proposed is for Central Admin to intervene when management hierarchy fails and delegate it to some member present in the environment for this year.

Best Practice, suggestions or alternate solutions are welcome.

Version (include the version you are using, if applicable):23A (11.13.23.01.0)

Code Snippet (add any code snippets that support your topic, if applicable):