What to Do When a Key Employee Quits

Losing a key employee can happen to any business. You have somebody rise to the top of your organization who becomes simply indispensable – and then, one day, they’re gone. You may now feel you have no choice but to panic. After all, this was a beloved and vital employee. So aside from breaking into a cold sweat, what should you do?

1. Be happy for the employee.

That may be tough if you feel a little betrayed or believe your business is in for some hard times. But getting angry about the departure isn’t going to help anyone.

“The first word from your lips when a key employee tells you they are leaving should be, ‘Congratulations.’ You may be upset internally, but show the employee that you truly are happy for them and their new opportunity,” says Joel Trammel, a former CEO of public and private companies. He is also the executive educator for a company he founded, American CEO, a business consultancy for CEOs. “Many executives and managers give the employee the silent treatment for the final two weeks after they give notice.” 

Big mistake, according to Trammel. “For one, you now have an A-player leaving with a bad taste in their mouth," he says. "You want that person, instead, to leave the company on a high note, and be ready and willing to refer talented people from their network back to your company.”

He adds that if they leave on a high note, they may, at a later stage in their careers, even be willing to come back themselves to a new role with you.

But don’t give up your corner office to get your key employee to stay.

“I have personally not seen much value in counteroffering and trying to get someone to stay at the company,” Trammel says. Instead, Trammel says, you should proactively work with the departing employee – and remember to stay positive. “Celebrating their career success almost always pays off down the road, even if it’s years later in ways you wouldn’t expect."

2. Evaluate the impact.

You'll want to look at how your employee's departure will affect your customers, team, and overall company, says Scott Rivers, managing director at Cerca Talent+, an executive search firm in Oradell, New Jersey.

"Certainly this person was responsible for critical items that must be covered, so let's identify them right away," Rivers says.

In other words, knowing what potential problems are coming will help you prepare for them.

3. Use every bit of their two weeks’ notice.

Not every employee – even the best ones – will be able to give two weeks’ notice, but if they do, use every minute of it.

“A few years ago, I had a key employee leave our company with two weeks’ notice, and it was the biggest lesson in business, and it changed the way I grew our organization,” says Violette de Ayala, founder and CEO of FemCity, a networking group for female entrepreneurs with over 50 chapters throughout the United States and Canada. De Ayala is based out of Miami, Florida.

De Ayala spent time with the employee, recording their meetings and discussing ongoing and existing leads, processes, and every facet of the business that the employee was working on. De Ayala also had the employee record some of her work with a video recording platform, so if she needed to see how to do something, she didn’t need to rely on her memory.

4. Conduct an exit interview.

Assuming your key employee hasn’t departed on bad terms or just hasn't shown up one day, you'll want to do an exit interview. You never know what you might learn.

“Ask for advice about your team, company and your own leadership style,” says Darcy Eikenberg, a leadership and executive coach in Bonita Springs, Florida. She is also the author of Red Cape Rescue: Save Your Career Without Leaving Your Job.

Eikenberg suggests these three questions to get a conversation going and pick up some useful intel:

• "Let's say you were now an outside consultant working for us. What are one or two things you'd recommend we do next?"
• "Who are the three people on our team who you believe are ready or trainable to fill the role you had?"
• "What could I have started or stopped doing six months ago that might have influenced you to stay now?"

And whatever the answers are, Eikenberg says, “Be quiet and listen. Don't defend, debate or otherwise dispute their point of view. It's just data. Listen and you might be surprised at what new solutions emerge.”

The goal shouldn’t be to try to convince the key employee to stay – though that’s great if it happens – but you do want to learn from any mistakes your company has made so this doesn’t happen again.

5. See this as an opportunity.

No, you don’t want your key employees leaving. But sometimes, change can be good. 

“When a key employee leaves, it's a transition moment for all involved,” Eikenberg says. “Your job as the leader is to respect the past but guide everyone toward what's next. It's the perfect opportunity to hit reset and revisit all aspects of the work: why we're doing it, who's doing it, and how we're doing it.”

She adds that you never know what you might find out when a vital employee departs. “You may uncover talent from an employee who never got to shine because your star filled the spotlight. Consider the departure a welcome time out to rethink your work and allow others to step in and stand out,” Eikenberg says.

6. Plan for the future. 

“If you are caught unprepared and the employee leaves you completely empty-handed, there really isn't much to do except improvise and try to hire as soon as possible,” says Michael Maximoff, a co-founder and managing partner at Belkins, a B2B lead generation agency with over 300 employees. Maximoff is based out of Dover, Delaware.

But, Maximoff says, the best way to avoid being thrown for a loop when a key employee leaves is to come up with a plan to prevent being completely surprised if it happens again.

"Hopefully you have a plan in place to ensure continuity of business for your customers' success, but if not, now's the time to get it in place," Rivers says.

That might mean a lot of things, like planning to offer paid consulting work to key employees who are leaving. Or you may want to offer training to employees in various departments, so they can get more experience working in different areas in the company. 

“The easiest way to replace a key employee is to have a pool of talented employees that were already getting ready and prepared to replace them,” Maximoff says.

No employee is replaceable in terms of what they bring to a company, and you wouldn't want to have a company culture where your employees are thought of as easily replaceable cogs in a machine.

But you do want the responsibilities and processes that people are working on to be transferable to other employees. Think of your company like a sports team where you constantly pull players off the bench to see what they can do.

However you start hammering out a plan, you'll want to try to come up with it before you need it. The moment you think that you can’t imagine how your business would run without your beloved and vital employee is the moment you should start coming up with a strategy to do just that.