What to Do When a Key Employee Quits

Sometimes colleagues who work together suddenly leave their jobs.
What is the best thing to do in such a situation?
I have yet to find the right answer.
Hello,This is Santoshi.

For companies of any size, there is a good chance that one day an employee will suddenly tell you that he or she has decided to work for another company, which can have a significant impact on the business of a startup with a small number of employees. Here is a summary from Groove, a startup support service, on what to do if an employee quits.

Your Best Employees Will Quit. Here’s What To Do About It.
https://www.groovehq.com/blog/what-to-do-when-employees-quit

As a manager, if an employee suddenly quits, your initial shock will gradually turn to disappointment, anger, and anxiety. The more important the employee is in an important position, the more you may be tempted to ask, “How am I going to get the business back on track?” when you hear the news of their resignation. when they hear the news of their resignation. However, not all employees necessarily work until retirement. For a company with a few hundred employees, just one employee quitting won’t do much damage, but for a startup with only four employees, for example, one person quitting can mean the loss of 25% of the workforce at once.

At Groove, since its inception, CEO Alex Turnbull has learned a lot about supervising employees, developing a team, and preventing good people from leaving the company. Here are some of the most important and valuable lessons learned.

◆It is not the manager’s personal problem that causes employees to leave.

Managers will have worked diligently to make their target matter a business success. And many managers are willing to sacrifice a lot to achieve their goals. However, employees other than yourself are not the managers of the company. Of course, as a manager, you want to recruit the best people, however, the important thing to remember is that the best people work not only for the company, but also for themselves.

While it is important for the company’s founders to help each employee with his or her life goals, the reality is that it is difficult to help all employees. The best employees should be given a path to the next step within the company. That way they will work hard and contribute to the benefit of the establishment and the team. As a manager, you need to remember that “talented people have great ambitions. If a talented person quits, the first step is to accept the fact and support them. Do not run on emotions.

◆To devise ways to help team members love their jobs.

The possibility of an employee leaving for an important position is inevitable. Most startups do not do enough to make employees love their jobs. Instead of superficial innovations, such as providing better benefits such as lunch, for example, there needs to be something core to making employees love the work they are doing. Since the type of innovations that work best for a team will vary from company to company, it is important to ask employees directly to determine what they need. Management should take time regularly to talk to employees about their lives, goals, and challenges. It is important to ask them about the goals they want to achieve in the short term as well as over several years, and to help them achieve their goals as managers.

Turnbull says there are three things you need to do to build valuable relationships with your employees
Ask thoughtful questions.
Listen intently to what employees have to say.
Helping employees achieve their goals.

Examples of goals that employees have include starting their own business, becoming a company executive, balancing work and life for their families, working for another company, becoming an expert in a particular technology, and so on. All of these goals are important to the employee themselves, so it is important that you as a manager know what their goals are. Because if an employee is not given a position that will help them on the path they are on, they will not be happy and will not be able to fully excel in the company.

◆How to prevent employee turnover in a startup

Even with all these efforts, employees can still leave, and Turnbull says there are three ways to protect your startup’s business and ensure that it will continue to run smoothly if they do leave.

1: Don’t create “indispensable personnel.

This may seem counterintuitive at first glance. With startups having limited resources to start a business, it is natural to want to hire people with skills that no one else has. However, you should be careful not to let one employee monopolize a key role in the company. Because if that person leaves the company, no one else can replace him or her. To prevent this, it is important to always think about all employees, “If one employee left tomorrow, what would be the impact? If there is a job that only one employee knows about, the following methods should be used to solve the problem.

2: Document the system

Shortly after the start of a startup, a lot of knowledge will be accumulated for the company. As your business grows and you have more employees, it can be difficult for employees who join later to suddenly work on the front lines. Therefore, you should document the progress of work that is important to the business and keep a record of it. This way, you can quickly check them when you need them later. For example, how to solve a product problem, how to update a blog, how to contact customers, how to develop a campaign, a summary of software used in the company, account information needed for the job, and procedures for dealing with problems when they occur.

Documenting the information you need for your employees not only helps you prepare for when an employee leaves, but also helps you grow your business. groove’s internal staff uses Slack, a group chat and file-sharing service, to share information. if you log into Slack, you can They can log in to Slack and get the information they need from a large number of documents, which helps them work more smoothly.

3: Keep your team happy.

Shaping the culture within the company is not just about creating a good work environment or improving the business so that employees don’t quit, but also about making it easier for the remaining employees to work if a large number of them leave. If everyone on the team knows that “management cares deeply about its employees,” employees will leave quietly without making waves when they leave. They will also contribute as much as they can to the team before they leave, and the handover will go smoothly.

Satoshi

Hello, I’m Satoshi. I’ve been working as a staff member for an organization for over a decade. During that time, I’ve had various experiences, from launching new businesses to streamlining operations using information I’ve gathered from the internet and my own experiences. Of course, I’ve been successful with the help of colleagues and superiors, and I’m grateful to them. Nowadays, I find myself in a position where people from various backgrounds ask me for advice and share their knowledge. However, being constantly approached has made me realize that I need to protect my own time. So, I’ve decided to start a blog called ‘Satoshi Lab’ to share knowledge. I hope that by writing about my thoughts and experiences, people will enjoy reading and find it helpful in their own journeys.