Don’t Leave Your Key Positions Open For Long
The costs of open positions seem never-ending.
Not only do you forego the revenue-add from the productivity of the role (every hire should, theoretically, add value to your bottom line), but you stress your current workers, who often take up the slack for the long-vacant role.
To boot, you lower morale, lose market positioning when competitors do not have those vacancies, and you could potentially lose employees who are over-worked, as you conduct your search for the elusive candidate.
Ideally, you want a replacement to be brought on concurrently with an exiting resource, for succession planning. This raises morale for the group, and raises the Day One confidence levels for the new hire (closely related to actual competency).
When that cannot happen, as time passes, cultural knowledge pieces begin to disappear. Documents. Orientation materials. The people who know how the role works, or who can provide contextual training or advice – they all begin to atrophy or disappear.
When it’s all said and done, the longer a role is empty, the more expensive it becomes to fill it. And this calculus only increases with higher-functioning or harder-to-fill roles.
Get ahead of your recruiting, and try to hire concurrent with the off-boarding individual, when you can.
