Saying Goodbye to Employees

The last area to address when scaling down is your people. This is going to be the hardest one to address because no business owner wants to be in this situation. Restructures and redundancy processes are difficult, and we might do anything to make this situation pass as quickly as possible. Try to avoid that impulse—you can carry out this step with empathy and kindness, while still making sure you take the time to protect what is left with your business.

First, you need to consider the devices and accounts your employees have access to. You will want to retrieve what you can, knowing that you might not be able to retrieve it all. Even if you lose copies of some documents or data, you can still keep control over accounts by resetting passwords or removing access just after they leave. If there are devices you can’t get back, for example, if they are lost, damaged, or it’s unsafe to claim them, you can monitor your accounts to block and unlink access from these devices. You can also remotely wipe these devices if you set that up when we covered it in Part II, but be sure to do it with kindness. We have all used our work devices for personal use at one point or another, and it would be a real kick in the ankles to lose your job and copies of some personal data you had stored on your work laptop. You can always give employees who have left a heads-up that you need to wipe the device, and give them a chance to back up or move any personal files they might have stored.

​danger​ Watch out for systems or workflows that might depend on an individual employee’s account. Often, we might set up automated workflows or system service accounts that are tied to our own individual emails or accounts. If these accounts are disabled, this could result in a domino effect of failures that would be a challenge to clean up.

This is especially the case for any software engineers or leadership team members that might have been key account holders or key people involved in setting up new software or systems.

A common example of this is tools like Slack. Messaging platforms are often the first to be set up in a company and are often created from a single individual’s work email address. If you were to just delete the associated email address, the main Slack administrator account may be lost too, creating a massive headache and risking the loss of key company communications.

​confusion​ Instead of deleting an account, it may be safer to change the password and store the new password in your password manager. This allows you to handle situations where their account was personally coupled into a key system or workflow with care (rather than during a highly stressful restructure).

When faced with downsizing, you are already finding yourself in a challenging situation. The good news is that if you consider those three areas, your business will be in a much better position to survive this dark time and avoid unnecessary security and data risks, and hopefully emerge on the other side as a new, growing business.