In most businesses there is at least one process only one person really understands. It works, right up until they resign, retire or take leave at the wrong moment.
What key-person risk actually costs
- Work slows to the pace of the one person who can do it.
- Training a replacement means finding out what the job actually involved.
- Decisions get made differently depending on who is doing them.
- Process documents are written once and are wrong within months.
Software remembers, documents do not
A written procedure decays because nothing forces it to stay true. A system that does the work cannot drift from the work, because it is the work. When the process changes, the system changes, and the record of how the business runs updates with it.
What that gives you
- The process runs the same way regardless of who is in.
- New staff step into a system rather than an apprenticeship.
- The way your business works becomes something the business owns.
Where this fits
Sharpest where the work is specialised and the team is small: aged care, professional services, trades and contracting. Related: timesheets, dockets and leave.
Common questions
What if the person who knows it is leaving soon?
Then it is worth starting now. Capturing a process while the person is still there is straightforward. Reconstructing it afterwards is not.
Does this replace the person?
It replaces the risk, not the person. What it takes away is the part of their job that is repetition, and the exposure of having it live in one head.
Where to next
Tell us what the work looks like now and we will tell you plainly what can be built and what cannot. Start a brief, or see how we work.