Employee Independence - Bill Black

For the last couple of days we’ve been talking about creating a culture of independence. Today we are going to talk about employee independence.

If you´re too reliant on any one employee, you are at significant risk if that employee chooses to leave and at a disadvantage when it comes to negotiating his or her salary.

To avoid this situation, nurture a pool of people you want to hire. Some executive search firms offer a bench-building service that proactively recruits a short list of candidates who could fill your key roles so that you have a "bench" of people to go to in the event of an employee defection.

Ask yourself and your key management these questions:

How easy would it be to replace your most important sales & marketing employee?

Rank your employees from easiest to most difficult to replace. What can you do to become less dependent on those most difficult to replace?