Disaster Preparedness Blog - Emergency Preparedness Tips, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Emergency Management

Many businesses have Key Employees who are the only people responsible for specific duties, and often these are critical, core functions to the business. Often these employees will also have the only access to certain information that may be needed to perform some of these critical functions and operations.

The impact on the business after the loss of a key employee can be severe and can include but are not limited to the following:

The distraction of other employees, resulting in missed opportunities and deadlines, deteriorating morale, and internal conflicts

The loss of confidence from employees, managers and financial backers of the business and can include both suppliers and customers

The business may suffer a weakening of their credit rating.

The financial cost (in time and dollars) to find, hire and train a replacement.

A need for immediate cash to fulfill promises made to the deceased employee's spouse or family, such as salary continuation or deferred compensation or other incentives promised.

The business might also fail to capitalize on important business opportunities because cash reserves are being used to recruit and train the new employee(s) or pay out compensation.

Fortunately there are a number of things you can do to mitigate these issues the first of which is consider key employee insurance. Documenting the processes acurately that the Key Employee is responsible for is another.