Help: My best expert is about to leave the organisation
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Imagine the day that you rock up to work, greet your team, only to be given the worst possible news – one of the experts in your team has been poached by another organisation. Some days could definitely be better!
What could you do?
Unless you’re really unlucky (or lucky, depending on your view!) you’ll be reading this with time to plan for it actually happening. A good first step is to work out who is currently critical to the team – and what can you put in place to have an ‘understudy’ in case they become unavailable. A good second step is to hold career and development sessions with each person in your team – this will alert you to people who might be a ‘flight risk’ if you don’t help them with their ambitions!
What could you do?
- Can you talk them down?
The first thing to try to work out is whether they are absolutely dead set on going. There is a perception that once a person has resolved to leave, they can’t be persuaded otherwise – but I’m not sure that that’s always true. Even if you can get them to stay for a further six months it will make your succession issues much easier to deal with. - Deal with the immediate aftermath
Sometimes leaving can be contagious. So if they are committed to leaving, spend some time making sure that other people in the team are secure and are not thinking of moving on too. - Decide what you are going to do with the work
Often a major headache caused by somebody leaving indicates that you have too many eggs in one basket. When you are reallocating their work to other people, ask yourself whether you should find a replacement person or instead allocate the work out to a group of people so that the responsibilities are split and you’re exposed to less future risk. Consider all of your options to pass on the knowledge to individuals rather than immediately putting yourself back in the same situation. Can this in fact provide professional development that will motivate people to stay longer? - Find a replacement
When it comes to replacements, you’ll usually have five options available:
- You might find a direct replacement by recruiting someone with the exact skills you need – but this may be impossible. Often experts are experts because they have a lot of historical knowledge about corporate systems or processes – you can’t just buy them in.
- As we mentioned above, you could divide the work across a range of people rather than a single replacement.
- Consider whether there is someone who has left the organisation who you could invite to come back on a full or part time basis.
- Is there a “fast tracker” in the team or department who might help by stepping up and learning quickly – or who can learn fast from any interim that you bring in? Could a graduate on a rotation scheme be a stopgap measure, while also providing real responsibility and learning? Talk to senior managers about people who need to be given stretching opportunities, and to HR – particularly people in your Talent Team responsible for fast trackers, graduates and apprentices.
- Explore if there people in adjacent teams who can support you? They may be able to take on part of the role, or provide continuity of supervision after your expert has left.
- Don’t let history repeat itself.
While it doesn’t help immediately, don’t let it happen again – take steps now to protect your team by putting plans in place to minimise the impact of somebody leaving.
Unless you’re really unlucky (or lucky, depending on your view!) you’ll be reading this with time to plan for it actually happening. A good first step is to work out who is currently critical to the team – and what can you put in place to have an ‘understudy’ in case they become unavailable. A good second step is to hold career and development sessions with each person in your team – this will alert you to people who might be a ‘flight risk’ if you don’t help them with their ambitions!