Preparing for Turnover

At the Intuit Small Business blog, Brett Snyder talks about how to prepare for turnover.  He says:

I’ve known that my concierge would be leaving from almost the day she started. She’s been working hard during grad school, but she’s moving on to a full time job. She’s done a great job, and I’ll miss having her, but I couldn’t have asked for an easier transition.

I’ve been slowly looking for new concierges to come in and fill the void. One is just about finished with training and will be ready to go in a few weeks. I’ve also been building a list of interested concierges who passed the first couple rounds of interviews.  So now, if there’s a sudden opening, I’ll be in a better position to get someone new up and running.

Create Training Materials in Advance

Brett also says:

I’ve also done a fair amount of work on our training document, beefing it up to provide more information to newcomers. In addition, I’ve better defined roles to make sure that the job is not as nebulous as it was originally. The end result is that things are running much better than before when it comes to replacing a departed concierge. Turnover sucks, but at least now it’s easier to combat than it was just a couple months ago.

My Babysitter Plan

Brett recommends an excellent approach, and I’ve recently tried something similar.  Although I don’t have anyone working for me right now, I do have babysitters for my kids.  Babysitters are always turning over because they will go away to school or secure full-time employment.  But I don’t want to spend years of my life searching for new sitters, so I just spent a good chunk of time screening and interviewing sitters who can serve as backups when my current sitters are unavailable or decide to move on permanently.

There are never enough hours in the day.  By expending some more effort upfront on your recruiting and onboarding efforts, you’ll save yourself a lot of last minute rushing around and unnecessary stress later on.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

 

Comments

[Bryce Christiansen]

What a wise approach to turnover. We all know it will happen, even in the best of companies, so having a plan in place ahead of time is a great way to keep the problems associated with turnover to a minimum.

Great post,

Bryce

[Alexandra Levit]

@Bryce: Glad you liked it, and thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!