Recently, a friend of mine with a small business found her assistant/office manager stealing untold amounts of time. Having too much of your revenue dependent on one key account, one product, one service, one advertising media, one calendar event, one means of distribution, one anything is just bad business. As it is, he's decided that really isn't necessary. Access software lets you work the way you want, giving your organisation the power to thrive and grow, Using performance management and development to get the best out of your law firms employees, The new modern foreign language GCSE what you need to know, How creating an inclusive workplace for learning disabilities can benefit your business. One is that staff are given a laptop with a local login.
Every organization must take up cross-training in the workplace so theres always at least one employee who could take over the responsibilities of another in his absence or share the workload when required.
If your organization has a formal succession plan, you might already have replacements identified. The exact same thing occurs with the people in a business. Most of those separations of function are Financial, but there are rules an IT Dept must follow. I wondered if there was some ISO standard that advise that every corporate function should be handled by at least two persons. I'm the IT administrator, I don't know how to reset your password." Depends on what kind of work they're doing. So when Mac No. This is a foolproof employee backup plan in the constantly changing business environment where an employee might need to take up a new role out of the blue. Despite its utility, cross-training is a magic leadership tool that most managers and supervisors, unfortunately, tend to overlook or underestimate. Any time all your eggs are in one basket, some guy named Murphy jumps in with a big wrench and throws it into the machine and then watches the chaos ensue. It means that the team has regularly assigned positions and does little or no job rotation. I mean not really 100% backup, but that at least one that can handle temporarily his/her duties? Ruthless Management of People & Profits, business coach and consultant Dan S. Kennedy presents a straightforward assessment of the real relationship between employers and their employees, and dares you to take action. It sounds as if a lot of your concern is about your role as IT. Required fields are marked *, (C) 2022 Velaction Continuous Improvement, LLC. It would make labor and hiring even more unmanageable. Entrepreneurs often confuse an invention, a product, even a website with a business. On the marketing and business development side, it's important to remember that diversity equals stability. Lets go over some good elements of an employee backup plan: It sounds obvious but it can be easy to forget to assign someone to perform the backup work. https://www.axelos.com/best-practice-solutions/itil. However, if you want to market , Is a tight budget making it hard for you to pay bills on time? Edit and clarification: I am worried about the criticity of some employees (we only have one IT person managing all the assets, domain, licenses, passwords). As Jerry Osteryoung, professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship, points out, Benefits of cross-training include corporate readiness when there is a need to fill the shoes of an employee; providing more variety in employees work, which typically results in happier and more productive workers; and the interaction of employees, which builds a sense of teamwork within and between departments as each employee becomes more aware of what other employees and departments do.. With cross-training, you get back upstaff without hiring new employees and risking productivity.
Rieva is a small-business contributor for Fundbox and CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Read our privacy policy for more information.
You buy insurance, you have your teeth cleaned at the dentist, and follow your cars maintenance schedule. Unless that person works solely as a floater, she will also need a backup for her regular position. This motivates them to be supportive of one another, increasing work efficiency. They are two different things. Hi community. I can do some of the things the other guys can do just not as well as they do because i dont do it all the time, on the flipside, they cannot do what i can do but some other people can do some bits i can do. We do this. Real world situations in which an organization lost\had to pay a large sum of money to recover after loosing a key employee. And no, there is no such regulatory protocol such as that. None of this could work without formal documentation addressing every level of the learning curve.
Many companies will take out an insurance policy on employees identified as "critical". If you have a compliance person, start there. My question is, what happened that motivated you to ask this question? If your management is not being helpful with this, one thing you can do is to perform a risk assessment and show them the results ("if I die on the way home, here is what could potentially happen to the company"). With two, you're the boss, and you can, if and when the need occurs, be ruthless. The Hiring Outlook for TA? At the very least, document your concern by sending it in writing (email) to your manager/supervisor. Identify key positions. Boynton Beach, FL 33436, Ken loves speaking to audiences about how they can get more done at work with less stress. Unemployment line, here I come. The goal was to identify the potential disruption to an organization. This Executive Director's Family Doesn't Support Her Work, But She Won't Stop Fighting for Underrepresented Creators. The refresher can also update people on things like new software, passwords, or changes to a process. Regularly chatting with employees and gauging the mood of the office will help you spot someone whos dissatisfied so you can either forestall their quitting or make plans to deal with it. 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.
Your goal is to make the instructions easy to understand and follow. However, some aspects need to be taken care of before initiating such a program and those include the decisions on the eligibility of candidates for cross-training, for which roles cross-training is required or if all the employees need to be cross-trained in all departments, whether it will be voluntary or mandatory and the protocols that need to be set in place for the implementation of the program, etc. What steps can your organisation take to reduce the effects of the IT person suddenly going of the scene? The NCUA actually makes suggestions during audits that you have a certain amount of employees in your IT department based upon your asset size. Shouldnt you have a similar strategy at work for employees? if(currentUrl.indexOf("/about-shrm/pages/shrm-china.aspx") > -1) { https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act. He's right, for our purposes. Your session has expired. We tell our employees to keep data on the server. Your daily dose of tech news, in brief.
Not only does enhancement of the employees skills benefit the business, but also the employees themselves. I wondered if there was some ISO standard that advise that every corporate function should be handled by at least two persons. Why your recruitment agency should review its credit risk strategy, Finance has a key role to play in protecting recruitment agency client relationships. Step 4. In a business where multiple employees know how to perform any given set of tasks, there is no unnecessary dependence on a single person. Further, they should be made to understand that such training helps both the employee and the organizational growth as employees improve their performance and have higher satisfaction with their jobs. You're seeing a theme hereyou've got this information from your staffing analysis. You cant expect people to step in, during a stressful time, if they dont know what to do. I don't think you guys understand what OP means by "backup." }. I do not know of any standard, but if you go on vacation for two weeks presumably your duties will be handled by other people. Employee backups are the people who fill in when the regular operator is absent. Cross training means everybody is trained in everybody else's job. If your marketing person is the only one who knows how to handle your business social media accounts, for instance, could you start training a junior employee how to do it? Your question and thinking is very smart and as many have already shared is part of, at the very least, a backup plan much less a DR (Disaster Recovery) plan. Nevertheless, there are often people in key roles with loads of undocumented know-how that will be sorely missed if they get hit by a bus one day. If I got run over by a bus. No standards body can do it for them, because there are just too many variables to consider. You also consider the need for another someone who has a basic understanding of your systems such that they could assist an experienced IT consultant (perhaps an arrangement with an MSP) that you could employ. We tell them it's for the safety of their work files but ultimately it's up to the users themselves whether they actually save to the network drives or not though. Apply for the SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP exam today! By subscribing to our mailing list you will always be update with the latest news from us. You can then back it up the server. Use talent pools to develop transferable skills for many positions. I guess you could say that my backup is just a list of passwords. If someone had the basic skills, then he or she could learn the other skills or knowledge required for the position. No I am not worried that they will take over my job (although I suspect most management will entertain the idea). Fortunately, I had a capable replacement readily available, and my wife was cooperative about the transition. Those key positions are a place to start. With one, you're not a boss at all. On a regular basis evaluate the plan to make sure the company's needs can still be met. This is a foolproof. Preparing for dry spells is a critical component in small business financial planning.
There is no one here who knows how to do all the things I do, and if I were a victim of a stray bus, the company would be in a rough spot for a bit. Is there please some norm (ISO,) that recommends that every employee in the company should have a backup? Whether it's temporary or long term, employees asked to assume greater responsibilities need support. This is why recruiting needs to be a part of the conversation so there are no surprises. Empower people with an employee backup plan. If it were my decision, for a small-mid sized company, I'd try to focus more on educating users about backing things up than on making a bulletproof backup solution. Additionally, a quarterly meeting with the MSP to make sure they are up to date on the day to day stuff should be enough to keep a business going in case that key person leaves or dies. For a small business, having one key employee quit can cause chaos. If you had an external audit of your organisation then I think that as part of their work they should consider the IT risk to the organisation and report it to the business owners. In the Lean office, identifying the work as the teams work, rather than an individuals pile of tasks, goes a long way toward limiting the need for backups.
Step 5. And since you are the Financial Manager, this seems right in your line of work. Ah, if that is what OP is asking, this doesn't seem like the right place to ask that. but there is a standard of auditing and making sure someone would be able to fill in if something happens. 3. His presentations inform, empower and entertain read more about Ken, Address: As many have said, it is ultimately senior management's decision based on many different factors. Developing a, isnt that difficult if you get certain nuances right. The documentation could take shape of training videos and process guides, to name a few. Business owners and staffs tend to get lazy or cheap about this and let the diversification narrow, relying over time on fewer and fewer sources, methods, means, media, and distribution channels over time, letting success lull them into false sense of security. If you simply dont have the staff or the expertise in-house to be ready to cover every position, plan ahead for how you would handle it if each employee quit. This was originally co-sponsored by the british government, until 2014, and is now maintained by Axelos. We use industry best practice security protocols. There isn't ISO about this as far as I know. I agree if you have a file server with enough space have them save business critical information to the server or point their personal drive to it. We use cookies on this site to enhance your user experience. as employees improve their performance and have higher satisfaction with their jobs. Whilst most businesses maintain backups of their important digital data to mitigate risk of unforeseen events nowadays, one medium that holds priceless data is often overlooked your employees. Having each position in the office 'cloned' at all times is a bit of a stretch, however, there's often overlap within departments, which can make transitions easier.
Every organization must take up cross-training in the workplace so theres always at least one employee who could take over the responsibilities of another in his absence or share the workload when required.
If your organization has a formal succession plan, you might already have replacements identified. The exact same thing occurs with the people in a business. Most of those separations of function are Financial, but there are rules an IT Dept must follow. I wondered if there was some ISO standard that advise that every corporate function should be handled by at least two persons. I'm the IT administrator, I don't know how to reset your password." Depends on what kind of work they're doing. So when Mac No. This is a foolproof employee backup plan in the constantly changing business environment where an employee might need to take up a new role out of the blue. Despite its utility, cross-training is a magic leadership tool that most managers and supervisors, unfortunately, tend to overlook or underestimate. Any time all your eggs are in one basket, some guy named Murphy jumps in with a big wrench and throws it into the machine and then watches the chaos ensue. It means that the team has regularly assigned positions and does little or no job rotation. I mean not really 100% backup, but that at least one that can handle temporarily his/her duties? Ruthless Management of People & Profits, business coach and consultant Dan S. Kennedy presents a straightforward assessment of the real relationship between employers and their employees, and dares you to take action. It sounds as if a lot of your concern is about your role as IT. Required fields are marked *, (C) 2022 Velaction Continuous Improvement, LLC. It would make labor and hiring even more unmanageable. Entrepreneurs often confuse an invention, a product, even a website with a business. On the marketing and business development side, it's important to remember that diversity equals stability. Lets go over some good elements of an employee backup plan: It sounds obvious but it can be easy to forget to assign someone to perform the backup work. https://www.axelos.com/best-practice-solutions/itil. However, if you want to market , Is a tight budget making it hard for you to pay bills on time? Edit and clarification: I am worried about the criticity of some employees (we only have one IT person managing all the assets, domain, licenses, passwords). As Jerry Osteryoung, professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship, points out, Benefits of cross-training include corporate readiness when there is a need to fill the shoes of an employee; providing more variety in employees work, which typically results in happier and more productive workers; and the interaction of employees, which builds a sense of teamwork within and between departments as each employee becomes more aware of what other employees and departments do.. With cross-training, you get back upstaff without hiring new employees and risking productivity.
Rieva is a small-business contributor for Fundbox and CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Read our privacy policy for more information.
You buy insurance, you have your teeth cleaned at the dentist, and follow your cars maintenance schedule. Unless that person works solely as a floater, she will also need a backup for her regular position. This motivates them to be supportive of one another, increasing work efficiency. They are two different things. Hi community. I can do some of the things the other guys can do just not as well as they do because i dont do it all the time, on the flipside, they cannot do what i can do but some other people can do some bits i can do. We do this. Real world situations in which an organization lost\had to pay a large sum of money to recover after loosing a key employee. And no, there is no such regulatory protocol such as that. None of this could work without formal documentation addressing every level of the learning curve.
Many companies will take out an insurance policy on employees identified as "critical". If you have a compliance person, start there. My question is, what happened that motivated you to ask this question? If your management is not being helpful with this, one thing you can do is to perform a risk assessment and show them the results ("if I die on the way home, here is what could potentially happen to the company"). With two, you're the boss, and you can, if and when the need occurs, be ruthless. The Hiring Outlook for TA? At the very least, document your concern by sending it in writing (email) to your manager/supervisor. Identify key positions. Boynton Beach, FL 33436, Ken loves speaking to audiences about how they can get more done at work with less stress. Unemployment line, here I come. The goal was to identify the potential disruption to an organization. This Executive Director's Family Doesn't Support Her Work, But She Won't Stop Fighting for Underrepresented Creators. The refresher can also update people on things like new software, passwords, or changes to a process. Regularly chatting with employees and gauging the mood of the office will help you spot someone whos dissatisfied so you can either forestall their quitting or make plans to deal with it. 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.
Your goal is to make the instructions easy to understand and follow. However, some aspects need to be taken care of before initiating such a program and those include the decisions on the eligibility of candidates for cross-training, for which roles cross-training is required or if all the employees need to be cross-trained in all departments, whether it will be voluntary or mandatory and the protocols that need to be set in place for the implementation of the program, etc. What steps can your organisation take to reduce the effects of the IT person suddenly going of the scene? The NCUA actually makes suggestions during audits that you have a certain amount of employees in your IT department based upon your asset size. Shouldnt you have a similar strategy at work for employees? if(currentUrl.indexOf("/about-shrm/pages/shrm-china.aspx") > -1) { https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act. He's right, for our purposes. Your session has expired. We tell our employees to keep data on the server. Your daily dose of tech news, in brief.
Not only does enhancement of the employees skills benefit the business, but also the employees themselves. I wondered if there was some ISO standard that advise that every corporate function should be handled by at least two persons. Why your recruitment agency should review its credit risk strategy, Finance has a key role to play in protecting recruitment agency client relationships. Step 4. In a business where multiple employees know how to perform any given set of tasks, there is no unnecessary dependence on a single person. Further, they should be made to understand that such training helps both the employee and the organizational growth as employees improve their performance and have higher satisfaction with their jobs. You're seeing a theme hereyou've got this information from your staffing analysis. You cant expect people to step in, during a stressful time, if they dont know what to do. I don't think you guys understand what OP means by "backup." }. I do not know of any standard, but if you go on vacation for two weeks presumably your duties will be handled by other people. Employee backups are the people who fill in when the regular operator is absent. Cross training means everybody is trained in everybody else's job. If your marketing person is the only one who knows how to handle your business social media accounts, for instance, could you start training a junior employee how to do it? Your question and thinking is very smart and as many have already shared is part of, at the very least, a backup plan much less a DR (Disaster Recovery) plan. Nevertheless, there are often people in key roles with loads of undocumented know-how that will be sorely missed if they get hit by a bus one day. If I got run over by a bus. No standards body can do it for them, because there are just too many variables to consider. You also consider the need for another someone who has a basic understanding of your systems such that they could assist an experienced IT consultant (perhaps an arrangement with an MSP) that you could employ. We tell them it's for the safety of their work files but ultimately it's up to the users themselves whether they actually save to the network drives or not though. Apply for the SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP exam today! By subscribing to our mailing list you will always be update with the latest news from us. You can then back it up the server. Use talent pools to develop transferable skills for many positions. I guess you could say that my backup is just a list of passwords. If someone had the basic skills, then he or she could learn the other skills or knowledge required for the position. No I am not worried that they will take over my job (although I suspect most management will entertain the idea). Fortunately, I had a capable replacement readily available, and my wife was cooperative about the transition. Those key positions are a place to start. With one, you're not a boss at all. On a regular basis evaluate the plan to make sure the company's needs can still be met. This is a foolproof. Preparing for dry spells is a critical component in small business financial planning. There is no one here who knows how to do all the things I do, and if I were a victim of a stray bus, the company would be in a rough spot for a bit. Is there please some norm (ISO,) that recommends that every employee in the company should have a backup? Whether it's temporary or long term, employees asked to assume greater responsibilities need support. This is why recruiting needs to be a part of the conversation so there are no surprises. Empower people with an employee backup plan. If it were my decision, for a small-mid sized company, I'd try to focus more on educating users about backing things up than on making a bulletproof backup solution. Additionally, a quarterly meeting with the MSP to make sure they are up to date on the day to day stuff should be enough to keep a business going in case that key person leaves or dies. For a small business, having one key employee quit can cause chaos. If you had an external audit of your organisation then I think that as part of their work they should consider the IT risk to the organisation and report it to the business owners. In the Lean office, identifying the work as the teams work, rather than an individuals pile of tasks, goes a long way toward limiting the need for backups.
Step 5. And since you are the Financial Manager, this seems right in your line of work. Ah, if that is what OP is asking, this doesn't seem like the right place to ask that. but there is a standard of auditing and making sure someone would be able to fill in if something happens. 3. His presentations inform, empower and entertain read more about Ken, Address: As many have said, it is ultimately senior management's decision based on many different factors. Developing a, isnt that difficult if you get certain nuances right. The documentation could take shape of training videos and process guides, to name a few. Business owners and staffs tend to get lazy or cheap about this and let the diversification narrow, relying over time on fewer and fewer sources, methods, means, media, and distribution channels over time, letting success lull them into false sense of security. If you simply dont have the staff or the expertise in-house to be ready to cover every position, plan ahead for how you would handle it if each employee quit. This was originally co-sponsored by the british government, until 2014, and is now maintained by Axelos. We use industry best practice security protocols. There isn't ISO about this as far as I know. I agree if you have a file server with enough space have them save business critical information to the server or point their personal drive to it. We use cookies on this site to enhance your user experience. as employees improve their performance and have higher satisfaction with their jobs. Whilst most businesses maintain backups of their important digital data to mitigate risk of unforeseen events nowadays, one medium that holds priceless data is often overlooked your employees. Having each position in the office 'cloned' at all times is a bit of a stretch, however, there's often overlap within departments, which can make transitions easier.