Last updated on November 12th, 2010 at 02:59 pm
As any business owner will know, an inevitable part of business is staff turnover. This can cause many businesses a real problem unless there has been a good handover between the member of staff that is leaving and the replacement.
It doesn’t matter whether it is a member of staff going on maternity/paternity leave, taking a sabbatical, being seconded elsewhere withing your business, or leaving the business all together you need to make sure that the replacement(s) knows about all the tasks being done. Don’t forget that in a small business people may do several tasks that were not part of their original job (for example in one company I worked for my “un-contracted tasks” included resetting the time switch on the heating when the clocks went back and forwards twice a year).
Ideally the handover should be structured and should include both a written document and a face-to-face meeting where the document is gone through and questions can be asked. The document should include things such as a description of what the employee does, any processes used, deadlines, key contacts, any ongoing issues, details of log-ins and passwords, where keys and documents are kept and anything else that is needed to ensure that the new person can pick up the job as quickly as possible.
Ideally the incoming member of staff should spend a few hours with the outgoing person, you might even want to consider a short time of shadow working where the new person watches exactly what is done and can ask questions. If it is the case that the outgoing person is leaving your business and is being replaced by a new employee could you bring the new employee in a couple of days (or even a week) early to allow this to happen?
The handover document should really be started as soon as the intention to leave is announced, from the authors experience this is can easily take several hours (or days even depending on the job) even to type up everything that is done and the other information mentioned above.
As an employer it is up to you to ensure that staff that are leaving, for what ever reason, know that they will be expected to produce a handover document and possibly have a handover meeting. You need to give the outgoing employee time to do this, after all if they rush the process they may leave out an important piece of information that only they know, and how would that affect your business?
If you have an HR department it should be able to advise you of the amount of time that it feels should be allocated to a handover and may even be able to provide a template. It will probably want to keep a copy of the hand-over document on file as this could be used in the future as a basis for a job description.
Hopefully by following the simple advice above you will ensure a smooth staff handover when members of staff move on.