Self Improvement Articles

What to Do When You Lose a Key Member of Staff (Including Yourself)

If you have employees or contractors that work with you in your business, there will come a time that either someone leaves willingly, or someone leaves unwillingly. People find other opportunities and sadly people get sick, or you must let them go. That’s how life is.

Your business is no different. In fact, you may find someday that you can no longer perform the duties you’ve always done, for a variety of reasons, and you’ll have to find a way around it. Luckily, if you plan well you can avoid a disaster from happening and keep work going regardless.

Wish the Person Well

If you lose a key member of your staff because they’re moving on to new opportunities, thank them and wish them well. Hopefully, you’ve been given a chance to find a replacement with a two-week notice. Use that time to conduct an exit interview so that you can make the position better for the next person.

Tell Those Affected by the Change

If this change affects anyone, from other staff to customers, it’s imperative that you announce the results quickly instead of taking your time. The sooner people know, the less likely they are to be worried. You can also mitigate concerns by being open and transparent.

Get Recommendations for a Replacement

Sometimes the person leaving knows other people who may want the position, so ask them. If that’s not the case, when you announce that the staff member is leaving, mention the job opening and the unusual opportunity right away.

Study What Went Wrong

If someone leaves due to stress or another issue, you may want to figure out what went wrong so that you can make your place of business more attractive to workers who will stay long term.

Communicate the Departure or Issue ASAP

If you are the one who has to leave for some reason (even though it’s your own business), if you can recommend someone to replace you to your customers, they’ll be very appreciative. If someone else is going to do the work in your place through your business like nothing happened, let them know that too.

Don’t Place All Your Eggs in One Basket

You can prevent problems with losing staff if you have redundancies in place. It depends on how you run your business but if you have an office, train someone to take over for that other person when they’re sick or out of the office. That person can then be put in that position temporarily until you find someone, or they can be promoted. If you hire contractors, consider hiring more than one for each project and have each do only a small portion that can easily be handed off to someone else should they leave.

Document the Work Steps

If you do a lot of work for your business outside of management and planning, consider documenting all that you do so that it can be easily given to someone else to do. That way, when you’re ready to leave or if you get sick, you can hand off work to due to the step-by-step directions.

Set Up Redundancies

One way to deal with losing staff is not to hire one person for each project. For example, if you’re an author who retains editors, employ more than one – for example, one editor works part-time while another works full time. That way, the part-time person already knows what to do and can be called on if you have more work for them to do.

Systemize and Automate

The more things that can be finished using technology, the better for the stability of your business. Try to systemize and automate everything that you can instead of hiring staff to do it. That way you won’t be dealing with this issue for everything.

Hopefully, if you act on these suggestions, you won’t be caught off guard by someone leaving unexpectedly or lose your business if you must be away from it for a while. In most cases, you can keep on going without a glitch if you plan for contingencies while things are going well.

Sometimes, even if you think you’ve done your due diligence, you’ll run into a client who had you do work that they have no intention of paying. But most of the time, the problem is something else. Often, it can be traced to poor cash flow and poor planning. Thankfully, if you react carefully you can usually get them to pay you.

Don’t Do More Work

If you are working on more deliverables for the client that is not paying, you’ll want to stop doing any more work for them until you make fair payment arrangements. If you keep working, they’re not going to be incentivized to pay, and you’ll just end up with them owing even more that they obviously cannot afford to pay.

Send Reminders

Whenever you create an invoice, make it so that it sends them reminders every three to seven days automatically. If it’s legal where you live, you can add an automated late fee to the invoice too. That way, not only will they get the automatic reminder but they’ll also see their bill getting larger.

Open Multiple Lines of Communication

Don’t just communicate via email; resort to sending bills in snail mail and sending SMS messages too. That way, they can see that they can communicate with you in many ways. You can also phone your customer to remind them when the bill is due and leave a message with alternative plan options.

Avoid Making Threats

While it is infuriating when you’re not paid – after all, you’re likely counting on that money – it does happen. It’s illegal for you to make threats to the person or to tell them you’re going to do something such as contact their employer. You also cannot legally out them to the world without liability concerns, so be careful.

Give Them Payment Options

When you realize they’re more than 30 days overdue paying, one way to get them to take notice is by sending them a one-time option to make payments on the amount owed. One tactic is to let them pay 75% of the bill, and you’ll zero it out if they do it by a certain time.

Sell Your Unpaid Invoices to a Bill Collector

You can find a bill collector who will buy the bills from you and then collect the unpaid bills. You can do this if you have iron-clad contracts and proof that they owe you the money. A bill collector may pay from 30 to 70 percent of the invoice, or they may take them by offering you half of what they collect.

Seek Legal Remedies

One way to deal with an unpaid bill is to hire an attorney who will work for you only to collect the money. In some instances, you may take them to the small claims court too. There are often many ways you can deal with this, including putting a lean on their property if you can prove they owe the funds.

Change Your Onboarding Process

If you have an issue with one client not paying, consider checking your onboarding process to ensure you get only paying clients from now on.

Create Legally Binding Contracts with Your Clients

Ensure that every single client you work with signs a contract with you, stating both of your responsibilities. Get an attorney to help you make legally binding contracts that work with your type of business.

Whenever you have an issue with a client, always look at your contract before you take any steps. Then, when you communicate with your client, bring up the contract so that they’re reminded of it, but always do it in a non-threatening way. After that, add methods to prevent the problem from occurring again to old contracts. Any repeat customer who has trouble paying on time needs to start paying upfront.