What did you do when you lost your best employee?
We’re going through this right now in our business. Our lead technician is moving out of state.
Honestly, it’s bittersweet.
I’m genuinely happy for him because this is a great life opportunity for him and his family, but I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t caused me a lot of anxiety too. He has been a huge part of our growth.
A lot of the consistency our customers experience came from him:
- reliability
- quality of work
- customer trust
- leadership in the field
- helping train newer employees
When you have someone like that on your team, it’s hard not to feel like “How are we supposed to replace this person?”
And the honest answer is you probably do not replace them immediately.
My wife and I already know we’re going to have to pick up extra work temporarily while we hire and train again. That part is uncomfortable.
One thing this situation has reinforced for me though is how important standardization becomes as the business grows. Because if all the quality, knowledge, and expectations only live inside one employee’s head, losing that employee can seriously damage the business.
Over the last couple years we’ve worked hard to document things like:
- customer communication, how to reply to someone, when to send our "On The Way" text messages
- gate procedures to make sure dogs are safe and secured after each visit
- completion expectations for each yard
- common customer issues
- onboarding processes to bring new employees up to speed faster
- training expectations to know what a "finished" job looks like
None of that magically replaces a great employee. But it does make rebuilding much more realistic.
I also think moments like this expose whether the business was built around systems or around specific people carrying everything.
Still learning through this one myself.
What did you do when you lost your best employee?