This past week, one of our concierges, Brad, decided to leave us for a new full-time job. That hadn’t happened in awhile, but it was a surprisingly easy transition (technically). However, I still had to dust off a few cobwebs to remember exactly what to do when an employee resigns.
My initial thought was to make sure that there were no outstanding client issues. No matter what, we have to take care of our clients first. But Brad is a conscientious guy, and he made sure that all of his clients had finished traveling before he left. So there wasn’t anything difficult to handle in that respect.
Next, I thought about all of the places where Brad had a presence in company materials. I needed to adjust those. To this end:
- I changed his email password and set his account to forward any messages to our general inbox, in case a client used it;
- I deleted his phone extension and re-recorded our company greeting, because it lists every person’s extension by name; and
- I removed his bio from the website and his extension from the contact page.
Once I’d handled the basic customer-facing tasks, it was time to turn inward. I had already paid his last check, so that wasn’t a concern. We had done this via email, which counted as a written notice, so we were set legally. I also made sure that our office chief knew not to send future clients to him.
Of course, I also emailed everyone else in the company to let them know that Brad was gone. I wanted to make sure they knew not only that he’d left, but also that he had done so to take another job (and not because of any internal issues with the company). I think people are always interested in knowing the real story behind someone’s departure. In this case, there was no juicy gossip to be had.
In the end, we will miss having Brad on our team, but the transition was about as painless as could be.
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