To improve the productivity of your business, you need an employee backup plan. This training process ensures work will continue normally, even if an important employee is suddenly taken out of the office by an illness or a family emergency. These problems often happen when you least expect, so it’s smart to be prepared.
During a recent presentation, I polled about 150 leaders in the health care industry about what would happen if a key employee was unexpectedly taken out of the office for an extended period. The goal was to identify the potential disruption to an organization.
For roughly 70 percent, it would be mostly business as usual, which is great news. The remaining 30% said many tasks would not get done and there would be a loss in productivity. Right now, ask yourself, what group are you in? Are you sure?
You buy insurance, you have your teeth cleaned at the dentist, and follow your car’s maintenance schedule. These are all examples of strategies designed to prevent or minimize future problems. Shouldn’t you have a similar strategy at work for employees?
Let’s go over some good elements of an employee backup plan:
Identify the Backups
It sounds obvious but it can be easy to forget to assign someone to perform the backup work. Figure out who is the logical person to take on the role.
Make sure you’re not having one person be in charge of backing up multiple employees. That can leave you vulnerable if that employee is out of the office unexpectedly.
The easiest thing may be to have people, who have similar positions, back up each other.
Create the Recipe
Like a chef, you need to create a recipe for the tasks your backup will need to perform. Ahead of time, while doing the work, write down every step.
You may feel the information is obvious but don’t assume anything. Your goal is to make the instructions easy to understand and follow.
Your step-by-step instructions should go in a labeled binder on your desk or in an easy to find computer folder. If people can’t find the instructions, then they are worthless.
Meet Up
Don’t rely on written instructions to get the job done. Have the employee and the backup meet to go over the important processes.
This needs to be scheduled as a priority and not left to chance. There will always be reasons why you should push back this training. Protect your business by making it a priority.
Refresher Days Strengthen an Employee Backup Plan
Pick a couple of times a year, during slower times, when people can revisit their training. You are setting aside time for this process.
This is especially important in situations where one employee does a very important task. Don’t allow an unexpected emergency to paralyze your organization because the replacement can’t remember what to do. Empower people with an employee backup plan.
The refresher can also update people on things like new software, passwords, or changes to a process. You can’t expect people to step in, during a stressful time, if they don’t know what to do.
Accountability & Workloads
You may want part of an employee’s job performance evaluation to include how well things run when they are not in the office. Even for short vacations, you want productivity to remain high.
It can also help company culture to let employees know that if they train their backups well, then they won’t be getting panicked emails and phone calls, when they are out of the office.
Finally, if someone is having to cover for an unexpected absence for an extended period of time, then you may want to adjust their workload. Over time, having to do two jobs will likely produce frustration and burnout.
Let’s Create a Memorable Meeting
