What to do if a key employee leaves a company?
When a person who has worked from the first days of the project leaves a company, a replacement can be a serious problem.
- First, it is difficult (if not impossible) to find a similar person.
- Second, you need to plan the period of time when the new employee will be studying the work, and other team members will have some time to train the rookie.
There may not be enough time for all these activities. HR does not look for such technical specialists every month. The head of a production department has not planned the training costs. Unexpected issues are good because they reveal interesting weaknesses in the workflow. And the standard solution in such a situation can be an ordinary overpayment to a new employee from the labor market.
A dedicated development team, like Diceus, takes such risks into account in advance (not every, though any has possibilities). And it can minimize them with the help of the following methods:
- Training of young specialists by studying certain projects.
- Transferring of a specialist to other projects with an opportunity to return to the previous project in 1-2 years.
- Quicker replacement of an employee from the market, as the constant process of searching and hiring new employees, is a part of the outsourcing company’s business.
A similar approach in expertise management can be implemented in your own team. Everything depends on the available funds and the size of the projects.
Tip: in case of a long project, make an agreement with an outsourcing company on the possibility of short-term training of their young specialists on the project. Without payment or for a nominal fee. Thus, the number of available specialists with knowledge of projects will increase which will reduce future risks. And with the right approach, the quality of work will also increase, due to free testing and fixing minor mistakes.
Differences in the professional growth of specialists in and out of outsourcing
Classically, there are 2 types of career development lines:
Horizontal – when you grow in one sphere (specialist is a leading specialist).
Vertical – when you change positions (specialist – manager – head).
A good thing that will let you better remember the differences is that a horizontal career is when you change chairs within one office. And the vertical is when you change offices.
In a company that focuses on creating its own project teams, there are more prospects to grow on the vertical line of career development. That is where you can become a team leader or a project manager, grow up and move to another department (sales, analysis or customer service).
At the same time, technical (horizontal) growth is supported to a lesser extent. How often do these employees have an opportunity to attend specialized courses? And does the company monitor the effectiveness of such training for its business? These questions are not important for the core business, so their solution is not built into production processes.