You may not want to think about it, but it’s bound to happen sooner or later: turnover in your IT department.
“Not a day goes by where we don’t receive an emergency phone call from a frantic executive with a story that we hear time and time again, ‘My IT guy has just quit, and he has all of our passwords, and we can’t do anything without him,’” says Zack Schuler, founder and CEO of Cal Net Technology Group.
Many companies don’t plan for this sort of exit, though this type of exit will be inevitable for every company at some point or another. It is safe to say that no one stays with a company forever, and when IT people leave, it can be especially painful.
Smart Business spoke to Schuler about how to put the proper backups and protocol in place to keep operations running smoothly even after the departure of trusted IT personnel.
What protective measures can businesses take to be ready for the departure of a key IT person?
1) Insist that your IT folks provide you with administrator and all passwords that they are in possession of. There is nothing worse than an IT person leaving, and not being forthcoming with password information. If you make this a requirement early, and ask for any changes often, you shouldn’t have an issue getting the information that you need. There are pieces of software that you can buy to securely store your passwords that you can give two or more people access to. The key here is making sure that there isn’t one person who has the ‘keys to the kingdom.’
2) Your IT team should provide you with complete and comprehensive network and systems documentation. I could fill up this article with the list of everything that should be documented, but let’s leave it simple and say that everything related to IT that has a power cord should be documented. Also, it is not good enough to document it once and then walk away, but a routine and methodical process of having it updated, at least quarterly, is a critical step. IT changes quickly, so you always want to have up-to-date documentation.
For some companies, this will be hard to get. For many companies, they’ve asked this of their IT folks, and it hasn’t been produced. Why? Most of the time, the pushback from IT is, ‘I have other, more pressing issues that get brought to my attention every day, and documentation always gets put on the back burner.’ One tip we’ve used here is to ask the IT folks to come in on the weekend (and offer to pay them if they are hourly, which they likely are, or at least should be), in order to get documentation done, uninterrupted. It doesn’t take that long once they get into the groove. If IT still pushes back, hire a company to come in and do the documentation for you. You’ll get it done, and have the benefit of an audit of your IT person’s work.
Once this is done, and done well, if the IT person leaves, it is a lot easier to have someone jump into their shoes and take over quickly.
3) Do your best to ensure that your IT people are cross-trained to the fullest extent possible. If you put a serious cross-training program in place, it may save you in the long run. It also gives you the opportunity to feel like you are not tied to a ball and chain with any one IT person, and it makes them replaceable, if the need be.
4) Develop a ‘lock out’ procedure. In the event that an IT person leaves, or is asked to leave, it is important to have a lock out procedure documented, and a plan in place to execute it. As soon as or just before the person is out the door, you should disable their user account and wipe their cell phone, if it is company property. Also, many times it is wise to have the user community reset their passwords, as, in some organizations, the IT guy had access to those as well. An exit agreement drafted by your attorney that lets them know that they are to give back any confidential information is advisable as well.
5) Hire an outside firm to be your backup. One of the duties that we fill for many of our clients is the role of backup IT provider. Most of our clients have an in-house IT staff, and we work with their staff on issues that they don’t have the skill sets to tackle themselves, or in areas where there is simply more demand than supply. Many of our clients hire us to help out, with the secondary benefit of being able to rely on us should an IT person quit or be let go. We are able to fill in for that person with minimal interruption because we’ve become familiar with the environment. Sometimes the company realizes that just part-time consulting work is all that they need, and other times we continue to work full time until they’ve backfilled us with a new resource, who we then train. Having a backup IT provider can be a very smart move.
It’s not always well received when the backup IT provider is brought to the table, as internal IT usually feels threatened. That being said, in almost every case, we work alongside that person well, and they get to understand our value. In many cases, we become the reason that the IT person is able to go on vacation, as we become his or her trusted resource. We want to become the IT person’s trusted resource, as well as the executives’ trusted resource, should the employment relationship go awry.
In short, protecting your IT environment means making sure that you have control over it. Nobody ever got fired for being prepared.
Zack Schuler is the founder and CEO of Cal Net Technology Group. Reach him at [email protected].
Insights Technology is brought to you by Cal Net Technology Group
