5 Steps to Take When an Employee Quits

One of your employees just quit. This is literally the worst feeling in the world. Trust me, in the 16 years that I’ve been in business I’ve been through a few times where employees have left my company. But even still as the employer you feel so overwhelmed by this. You don’t really know what the next steps are. When someone quits it makes you feel like, why am I even building a team in the first place? But I’m here to tell you that in order to have a successful wedding business, you need to have a killer team.

So we’re going to dive into what to do when an employee quits. Grab your beverage of choice and let’s go!

Step 1: Take a Deep Breath and Don’t React Immediately

The first step I want you to take in this process is to just take a breath because it does hurt when an employee quits. I’ve been through many times where employees have left my business and to be honest, it’s just life. There is no stage in your business that you’re going to get to a point where you no longer have people that leave. But the longer you are in business, you are going to have the systems and
processes in place to be able to replace that person quite quickly.

So let it sink in for a second. Do not react right away. Do not send them an email back right away. Do not respond right away. Do not lash out or get frustrated or worse yet think that the whole world is falling apart.

Step 2: Assessing the Situation – Friendly vs Unfriendly Resignations

There’s two sections to this because this can go one of two ways. First, you’re going to assess the situation and you’re going to decide if this is a friendly resignation or is this one that didn’t come in such a friendly way. Depending on that then you will know how you’re going to react to the situation.

Friendly Resignation

Sometimes you could get a resignation from an employee because their husband was transferred to another state or because they’re pregnant and they don’t necessarily want to continue working
after they have a baby or because they got an incredible job offer that they absolutely couldn’t refuse, right?

So if you receive a friendly resignation, here’s what you’re going to do next:

I want you to think about if they are working directly with clients? Yes or no? Assess their client load and see how many clients they’re directly working with. Also, a lot of your full time employees are going to have additional projects such as HR or marketing or sales, so you really want to understand where they are with those ongoing projects. Are there things that they are planning on finishing up? Are there things that were already finished and you just didn’t quite know yet? You really want to get a list of all of the things that they’re currently working on and what the stage is that they’re in.

Have a further conversation with them. This has been the number one gift that has really served me well in my business to understand really where they are and that next step for them.

The last step of this assessment is to notify the clients. So once you’ve made the plan, then you want to make sure that you’re now notifying the clients. You do not want to notify clients until you are absolutely positive who is going to be working with that client instead.

Unfriendly Resignation

An unfriendly resignation happens sometimes. When this happens you have to act quickly. You need to move quickly on these steps because they still have access to your clients. So if they’re upset and they’re wanting to burn a bridge, we don’t want to allow that.

Here’s what to do next:

Immediately change any passwords that they would have had access to. So this would be Google Drive, Instagram, any of your CRM, anything that they had access to.

The next one is to remove all access to their emails.

Step three is going to be to reach out to any of the partners that you work with. You want to immediately let them know that this person is no longer representing your organization. Don’t go into details or gossip, just let them know.

The last step is going to be to assess their workload. How are you getting that covered? Is it you that’s going to be there? How are you letting the client know? Those are things that need to be handled
immediately, right away. Typically within 24 hours. You do not need clients to know that someone has left before you’ve let them know what the plan is.

Step 3: Evaluate What Happened and Learn from It

Step 3 is valuate what happened. I think this is really important and a lot of times we try to sit in this step way too early. I really want you to give yourself the opportunity to mourn the loss, take a breath, be in the moment and kind of just process it. Then assess the situation, make the plan, and notify everybody that’s important to notify. After those things are done, this is where I want you to evaluate what happened.

I want you to understand, are they leaving because of life circumstances? Because that just happens. Sometimes just simply because the next step, the next phase of your life is requiring it. And there’s no hard feelings at all! Are they leaving because of pay or hours? That’s something that I really want you to consider. You may lose an employee because you’re only able to give them 20 hours a week, but they need to be full time simply because of their life. So that’s something that I really want you to consider too is that something that you can fix in the future? Are you able to make a full time position? Are you able to increase the pay? I really want you to look at that before just kind of throwing it off.

The next part of the evaluate step is to understand if there’s something you could have given them to
keep them. Keeping amazing employees costs you so much less than hiring new ones. The time it takes to hire, interview, post the position, train the person, get them integrated with your team, get them up and running with clients, takes so much more time, money, and effort than it would to keep a great existing employee. So if somebody gives you a friendly resignation and they tell you it’s because of
something that you can control, I want you to think about it. Is there something that is within your
possibility that you could do to keep them? Because keeping a great employee costs less than hiring a new one.

Lastly, have an exit interview with them.

Step 4: Reimagining the Position and Learning from the Situation

Number four in this process is to learn from this situation. I want you to think about this. Now that this
person has left. How can you reimagine this position? Sometimes having someone leave your company gives you this opportunity to see your company from the top down and really look at and think, how can I reimagine this position? Did it make the most sense? Should I combine it with another skillset? Are there different personality traits I would like to have from the person who fills this position now that it’s open again?

Step 5: Implementing Changes and Moving Forward

The last step of the five part process is just to implement. If you need to rehire, get it posted. If you need to reformat your team, start doing it. Start asking some of your other team members what their interests are. What are things that you love to do? What are qualities that you have that we may not be utilizing? Do not drag your feet.

The thing that’s the hardest when you lose an employee is you definitely feel like, why am I doing this? Why am I building a team? It doesn’t seem worth it. Remember that being a solopreneur is just creating a job for yourself. That’s not why you started a business.

No one ever said building a team was easy. But it is worth it.

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