Business mentor: How to cope when a key worker goes

My right-hand man has resigned and he's got a head full of our stuff. I'm feeling vulnerable, what can I do?

Small business sector specialist Sarah Trotman spoke to Malcolm Dennis, managing director of Worklinx Systems.

Can I call your right-hand man Harry?

First, it's probable there is little you can do depending on the circumstances of the resignation. If it's amicable, and your employment agreement with Harry requires a month's notice, then you have a month to retrieve something. Let's imagine that's the case.

Can you buy another month? If that's not possible, transport your thoughts to a month from now and start coping without Harry.

Write lists of things only Harry knows about. Seriously wind down Harry's workload and ask him to review your list and start writing his own. You will quickly see how serious this is for your business.

The key to recovery is to download Harry's brain. Don't expect him to do it - that's too tough.

Rather, you need someone to spend time with Harry for the next month (or two) watching him do the stuff he needs to leave a record of.

For this exercise, you can use aids such as taking photos, recording on video, using a dictaphone and simply writing the steps down. The person to do this needs to be good at asking questions and quick at taking notes. It's a skill - hire a temp if you don't have someone who can do it. If you have the right relationship with Harry, he will co-operate and you'll survive. It will cost, but it will be worth it.

Now what about a hostile situation? I can't help you there. Of course, Harry can't take your intellectual property, and your employment agreement should cover this.

In most hostile cases, you will probably pay Harry for the month and move him out so he won't upset your other employees (assuming you have others). The big lesson for you is, don't let it happen again.

All your business systems should be documented.

You can't easily record skill and experience, that's silly, but you should have standard operating procedures recorded. If you know the procedures you can hire a new person with similar skills to Harry and he/she will be productive in no time because they will quickly learn your systems.

Malcolm Dennis has just written a book about this issue called Harry's Resigned. The sub-title is "There goes half of what we know about everything we do!"