Tragedy can strike at any time in an organisation, and the loss of a leader, especially a great one - can shatter the management of a stable company. This article will explain what you can do to help your organisation to prevent disruption in the event of the loss of a key member of staff, and what to do should the worst ever happen. This article would also be useful for building contingencies for also if staff leave unexpectedly or are fired at short notice.

Preventing Disruption

To minimise the negative effects of the loss of a key member of staff, there are 2 key contingencies you need to have in place.

1. Carefully Structured Hierarchy. Business hierarchies may seem formal and over-complicated - but an effective structure must be in place that can maintain the flow of operating and information should one of the links break. Particularly important are 'alternative' roles such as 'Stand-in Financial Director' so that employees have a clear knowledge of who will temporarily step in as FD should the Financial Director leave or pass away.

Employees should be consulted before assigned more senior 'backup' roles. Its important that they realise how much responsibility they could be taking on in the worst scenario. A stand-in director is pointless if they decide that they are not ready take such a large amount of responsibility and cover the gap, and subsequently flout their duties as director.

2. IT solutions for passwords.

One of the largest issues with the passing away of key employees is that the company becomes password blocked out of many of their personal data files - which contain information that's necessary to keep the company running smoothly. Have in place a system to retrieve data in such a way that does not present a significant risk to the controls in place within the company. You may need to discuss this with internal audit/your Group Company for guidance.

What to do after the loss

1. Don't attempt to stifle the story to reduce the immediate impact of the bad news, make an announcement within a day of finding out what's happened. One-day notice gives you enough time to have the following sorted out first.

2. Have a clear 'action plan' for how you will deal with the loss within the company. This should highlight the official temporary appointment of a stand in, and should also detail how the business is going to protect the client relationships that may have been lost.

3. After you've consolidated your thoughts, send out an email briefly honouring the leader, and quite separately secondly, roughly outline your action plan, to put the minds of worried employees at rest. The email should be warm, complimentary and comforting.

So there is some guidance on what to do surrounding the issues of a business leader passing away unexpectedly. This isn't a comprehensive guide, but only a few short tips to get you thinking around what YOUR business would do if terrible tragedy hit it. Would yours cope?