22 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

MANAGEMENT

When your best employee gives 2 weeks’ notice

By Cynthia J. Young

Other than momentary panic, what

should managers do when their best

employee gives two weeks’ notice? As-

suming nothing changes their mind, the

company has a lot to do and a short time

to do it. This is also assuming the per-

son leaving is available for these discus-

sions and your company does not have

a standard process in place for gathering

employee knowledge before their depar-

ture.

Determine all people, processes

and technology your employee uses

or interacts with. This step may in-

clude employees they work with

internally or customers. Ask what

processes the outgoing employee

used when doing any of their work

and if there is speciﬁc knowledge

required. Ask if these processes were

required to support their customer

deliverables.

Outside of the common ofﬁce

technology the employee uses, what

other technology is used? Does it require

any training? This is important since you

will need to fully understand what expe-

rience a temporary ﬁll-in would need to

be able to use to maintain standards the

outgoing employee supported.

Sit with the departing employ-

ee and note every responsibility

and associated due date identify-

ing whether they are recurring or

one-time. At a minimum, determine

contract deliverables, internal meeting

requirements, internal reports, legal or

policy-driven items and any associated

ad hoc tasks. Identify the ﬁll-in person

taking over these tasks and responsi-

bilities until a new employee is hired.

In addition to getting the data and in-

formation, get all required passwords or

physical keys, request all emails and, if

the departing employee had any direct

reports, determine everything associated

with their management responsibilities

so those people are taken care of.

Assign the person or people iden-

tiﬁed to temporarily ﬁll the gap to

meet with the departing employee

and turn over tacit and explicit

knowledge. This is the most important

step of this process since it can’t be done

after the employee leaves. Everything

else can be determined through read-

ing contracts and paperwork, talking to

team members or other employees, or by

talking to the customers.

The departing employee’s tacit knowl-

edge includes any experiences with the

task, customer or internal relationships.

Start with open-ended questions that

will be supported by the conversation.

Basically, ask them to talk about any ex-

perience they have gained in the job they

have determined is important or useful

to know in the execution of their duties

and responsibilities. Gaining the tacit

knowledge will also provide opportu-

nities to learn the nuances of the work

the employee does and the opportunity

to ﬁnd out the whys and wherefores that

aren’t attainable through other turnover

methods.

Explicit knowledge is written and

should be accessible to employees

throughout an organization. This should

include any directions, guidance or les-

sons learned that are documented and

the location of any processes used or

created. There will be follow-on ques-

tions; however, answers should be easier

to gather since experiential knowl-

edge is more difﬁcult to share.

Standardize the employee

turnover process. To protect your

organization, you should consider a

standardized knowledge manage-

ment process to address employee

departures. This standardized pro-

cess can also be used when moving

personnel to other company positions

or when you have personnel who have

emergencies that result in a gap in cover-

age. Remember, employees can quit any

time and are not required to give any no-

tice before leaving. 

Cynthia J. Young, DBA, is founder and

CEO of CJ Young Consulting, LLC, and

the lead for certiﬁcation and training with Lei-

dos in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She retired

as a Surface Warfare Ofﬁcer with 23 years in

the U.S. Navy and holds professional certiﬁ-

cations as a PMP, LSSMBB and CMQ/

OE. She is an IISE member. Contact her at

cjyoung@cjyoungconsulting.com.

Gaining the tacit knowledge

will also provide opportunities

to learn the nuances of the

work the employee does.