Your best employee just quit? Here’s how to handle their resignation

Employee resignations can be shocking and disruptive, but there are effective ways to deal with them to minimise the impact on your business.

It’s never nice to hear that a valued employee is finishing up, no matter what their reason for leaving is. When an employee resigns, don’t take it personally or make them feel guilty for leaving. Wish your staff member the best with their new role and future and make the most of their remaining time with the business!

To ensure that their resignation has minimal impact on your business, start planning how you will handle it immediately. Here’s our guide to effectively coping with resignations.

Plan for their resignation in advance

The reality is that all your employees are going to move on at some point, whether that’s to retire or for a new job opportunity. With this in mind, plan for their resignation from the start and have contingency plans in place.

Start by considering if there are other staff members you could promote to replace an employee if they were to leave. If you’d prefer to replace them externally, do you have a recruitment agency you regularly work with that can fill the role on short notice?

It’s also important to plan for what could happen if you can’t fill the role quickly. Make sure to have at least two staff members trained in everything, so that someone is there to pick up any responsibilities your employee leaves behind while you search for a replacement and consider temporary employees to backfill any gaps or administration. Furthermore, ensure that your employees understand their notice periods and that these are clearly outlined in their contracts so that they cannot leave on short notice.

Consider presenting a counteroffer

Depending on the employee’s reason for leaving, consider offering them a higher salary that competes with their new job offer. If an employee is simply leaving in search of higher pay, and it’s been a while since their last raise, now’s the time to offer them a pay rise. But be careful with this, if your employee is already being paid what they’re worth, don’t raise their salary to the point where you’re overpaying them, and underpaying their colleagues in the same role. But, be aware, statistics show that almost half of all employees who accept a counteroffer leave within 12 months anyway.

However, if they are leaving for another reason, such as a location that suits them better or a perk that your workplace can’t offer, it’s best to let them go. Even if you can offer them a higher salary that convinces them to stay for now, they’ll still be searching for those other benefits, and won’t hesitate to resign again once the right opportunity arises.

Plan for their replacement

If a counteroffer can’t be considered or agreed on, plan how your business will deal with the resignation. Firstly, consider if the employee needs to be replaced at all. It’s possible that their responsibilities can be dispersed amongst other employees, and that there is no need to fill the role. However, if you do decide that they must be replaced, come up with a plan for doing so.

The first group of people that you should consider for replacement are your existing employees. Think of if there is anyone in the team that is deserving of a promotion, or ready to step up into a new role. Promoting from within your organisation is the best option for replacement, as you already know the capabilities of your staff, and you can show your employees that there are opportunities for career progression within your business.

The downside of filling the role through promotion, however, is that you will need to find a way to fill the promoted employee’s original role. If you do decide on promotion, make sure that you don’t forget about the other role that is being left vacant!

If it isn’t possible to fill the role by promoting your existing staff, you need to come up with a plan for recruiting someone new. Firstly, decide on whether you will be recruiting by yourself, or if you will be reaching out to a recruiter. If you’re doing it yourself, make sure to get the process underway quickly, as it can take some time to find the right person for the role, and you want to minimise this as much as possible. Hiring the wrong person can cost your business at least 30% of the new hire’s annual salary, so it’s important to get it right the first time and allow yourself as much time as possible to do so. Similarly, if you’re using a recruiter, reach out to them as soon as possible, so that they can get started on sourcing you the right candidate.

Notify co-workers of the resignation

When an employee resigns, it’s best if their team hear it from you first. Call a quick meeting to inform the team of the resignation before they hear it from someone else; this also gives the employee who is resigning the opportunity to announce it themselves if they wish to.

In the meeting, make sure to tell the team when the employee’s last day is, and what the plan for replacement is. If there is an opportunity to replace the role internally, let your staff know so that they can consider if they will be applying for a promotion. If not, give your staff an expected timeframe for finding a replacement, and ask for the team’s help during this transition. Make it clear who will handle the employee’s tasks whilst you are finding or deciding on a replacement.

Make the most of their last few weeks

Once you find out that your employee is resigning, assign others to their tasks so that there is no confusion on who will pick up what work. If the employee who is resigning’s role involves customer or client contact, have them introduce other staff to their clients so that there is a seamless transition.

Use the employee’s notice period to train other staff in the tasks that they will be passing on, provide details about ongoing projects, and wrap up any loose ends. The staff they train will then either be able to take ownership of these tasks themselves or train the employee’s replacement when they start.

If you’ve had an employee quit, and are needing help filling a vacancy, fill in the form on this page and one of our specialist recruiters will be in touch.