Management of key personnel is crucial to the success of all business and small business are especially reliant on key people. We have all worked with “that” person, the one that knows everything about the business and in the event of their departure, they take all that knowledge with them and potentially expose the business losses.
Often, everything they know is stored in their head and they don’t rely on documented process or procedure guides. But what happens if these people leave? What risk does the business accept in these circumstances?
Management of key person risk is crucial to ensure the security and long-term sustainability of the business. Our TAP team can fill these gaps and give you the confidence to grow your business.
Factors that increase key person risk include the following;
• Highly mobile workforce: employees have never been more mobile; they are always on the lookout for a better option or an opportunity that helps them climb their career-ladder. This mobility exposes small businesses to greater risk and losses for time spent training those people and then costs of re-training new people.
• Individual capacity limitations: the scarcest resource in business, is the knowledge and experience that senior staff provide. However, they are still limited by the amount of time that they can dedicate to the business. A crucial risk management tool is to support these people with competent, professional staff, who effectively “extend the reach” of these senior staff, thereby making them more productive and valuable to the business.
• Protect against Concentration of Knowledge: as discussed earlier, there is often a concentration of knowledge that is held by key people and this is often undocumented and filed “in their head”. TAP supports key people in these roles to ensure that knowledge is not lost to the business, with the departure of key people.
• Process Documentation: closely related to the risk associated with a concentration of knowledge, is the risk of having undocumented processes and procedures. TAP can be used to document all processes and procedures and ensure that knowledge is retained within the business and available to all future staff.
Our TAP service helps business owners manage this crucial risk by supporting them with qualified professionals who “backup” key personnel.
If you need support for your key personnel, give us a call on 02 4942 1839 or email TAP@realbalance.com.au.