Key Employees can and will leave your Business, are you
prepared?
Very few businesses can claim to be prepared for the loss of key
employees. Quite often it is an unexpected and unplanned for
event that causes quite a bit of disruption to 'business as
usual'.
It is quite a gut wrenching experience to see an employee you
have worked with over a period of time leaving your business.
Even if the parting of ways is on good terms with a period of
handover, you just know that there is so much information
walking out the door with your former employee and there is
nothing you can do about it.
And this is only just the beginning...
While labouring through a period of being understaffed and
overworked you are then faced with the task of recruiting a new
employee to fill the vacant position. This is followed by the
inevitable probation and training period where, hopefully the
new employee comes up to speed and is able to pick up where the
former employee left off.
The problem is: What exactly was it that the former employee
really did? They always seemed to be busy and on the rare
occasion that they were absent due to illness, there were those
problems that arose that were only truly resolved when they
returned and took control and 'cleaned things up'.
There has to be a better way...
Fortunately quite a bit can be done to minimize the impact of
situations like this on our business. And like most truly
worthwhile solutions the steps required to complete this part of
your business development does take some effort on your part.
There is an established path that you can follow to get your
business in order and the benefits to you and your employees are
much farther reaching than just minimizing the impact of key
employees leaving you.
The following is by no means a definitive list of what is
required. But it does give you some idea of the steps required.
1) Create a flexible forward thinking Organization Chart
defining the positions you require in your business.
2) Determine what the responsibilities are for the positions in
your business.
3) Assign Employees to relevent positions in the Business.
4) Document key information that is critical to your business
and make it available to your employees.
5) Work with your employees to define what it is they do, how
they do it and most importantly how it could be done better.
6) Record, optimize then implement the business systems you have
identified.
7) Assign the business systems to the relevant positions and
monitor their use.
By consistently following these steps for all positions in your
business you will insulate yourself from some of the problems
that occur when key employees leave your business.