While losing a valued team member is a hard pill to swallow, it is the void they leave in their absence that creates the greatest hardships for an organization. Not only does an individual’s departure have the potential to stunt operational systems, but it can also disrupt communication with clients, generate unnecessary costs, and leave the organization open to a plethora of security risks.

To mitigate the impact of an employee’s departure, it is important to proactively evaluate your organization’s current data management and security policies. In particular, business leaders should pay close attention to three key areas: cloud data, subscriptions, and email. In the wake of an employee’s exodus, leaving these virtual environments stagnant creates a looming, yet easily avoidable, a threat to the organization’s productivity. Therefore, throughout this guide, we’ve suggested some proactive policies to help your business thrive without that key former employee. With this information in hand, you will then be given the opportunity to complete a module at the end of the article. Based on your answers, you’ll be provided with recommendations tailored to your organization’s specific needs.

The Importance of Proactive Evaluations

Cloud Storage

Assuming that your organization is progressive in its data backup routine, you probably use some method of cloud storage. While it’s crucial to remotely store data, it’s important to understand the consequences associated with improperly enforcing these policies.

When team members are working on digital projects, they’re doing so on the company’s dime. In return, these documents are ultimately owned by the organization and should be treated as property with a perceivable value. By placing these company-owned assets in one centralized environment, employee supervisors are able to regulate which team members have access to each individual file. When an employee departs from the team, this makes it easy to remove their rights to the documents and transition those privileges over to a new hire.

If this step is not enforced, team members are given free rein, allowing them to upload files to unregistered personal accounts. While yes, tools can be purchased to routinely scan and evaluate each team member’s digital backup routine, the diligence to ensure enforcement of this policy inevitably falls on the shoulders of the business’s leaders.

Subscriptions

Similar to cloud storage, it’s important to track the login credentials of company-paid services and subscriptions. By making this a standardized procedure, supervisors can once again permit and restrict access to those employees who are in good standing with the organization. If not properly implemented, failure to complete this step can leave the organization locked out of important accounts when an employee moves on from the team. Because some services have hefty recurring fees, being unable to login and cancel these subscriptions can result in unnecessary costs.

Email

For organizations that regularly correspond with external clients, losing a team member can thoroughly disrupt both the inbound and outbound flow of communication. Fortunately, most businesses tend to rely heavily on email, making it easy to search through prior conversations, redirect future communication, and maintain relationships. Therefore, before deciding what to do with a previous employee’s email account, it’s crucial to ask yourself the following three questions.

• Should this individual’s future emails be forwarded to another member of the team?
• Is this previous employee’s historical backlog of emails crucial?
  • Please be mindful that gaining access to a previous employee’s email address has the potential to raise some concerns in your organization’s Human Resources team. Therefore, organizational leaders should weigh the pros and cons of the decision before proceeding.
• Should I delete the individual’s email account?
  • It’s important to understand that the deletion of an email account and its content is permanent. Therefore, it’s essential to give this topic great consideration prior to making a final decision.

Assessing Your Email needs

By taking the time to answer the questions from the list above, you and your team will be well on your way to decreasing risk, increasing efficiency and increasing revenue. To assist in accomplishing this task, we encourage you to complete the brief survey module, found below. In doing so, you’ll be provided with immediate insight into a potential resolution, accompanied by a brief explanation of how it can be achieved. By then submitting this assessment to our team, Rocket IT staff will be able to evaluate your organization’s unique situation and provide you with the next steps towards implementation.

If for any reason you have questions relating to the items discussed in this article, we encourage you to give us a call at 770.441.2520.