So, your valued senior staff member has found a new opportunity and has just given you two weeks notice. Great! You wish them well, notify your staff and start the scramble to update the job description and get up to speed on the person’s current projects. The two weeks fly by and next thing you know you’re out with your team having a drink and a send-off for your now-former employee.
While you feel confident that the vacant role is a great opportunity and that you won’t have too much trouble filling it, this process will take some time – time we call the “recruiting gap”. During this gap, important projects and initiatives can get sidelined or handed off to someone who doesn’t have the same level of skill and experience, or worse, other strong team members get pulled away from their important work and are forced to divide their time. All this turmoil can negatively impact your team’s productivity, cause frustration and put pressure on you to accept the first candidate for the role, and not necessarily the best one.
Even if you know of a qualified candidate and everything goes well, you might be able to fill the role within 5-6 weeks. But, if you have to recruit, that timeframe can easily expand to 8-10 weeks or longer. If this position remains open for an entire calendar quarter, how far will that set you and your team back on your annual objectives? This is the significant ‘hidden’ cost of having a key leadership position vacant.
One solution to bridge the “recruiting gap” is to engage an interim executive to step in on short notice to provide leadership and stability and manage key priorities. This person can bring a fresh and unbiased perspective and help provide more clarity around the exact qualifications and characteristics you need to look for as you recruit for the position. While there is a financial cost to bringing in an interim executive, the continuity it brings to your team and your goal achievement make it a great investment.
At The Osborne Group, all of our consultants are carefully chosen for their expertise and ability to quickly step into an interim role, understand the current situation, and start having an immediate impact. Keep this in mind the next time that valuable employee steps into your office, resignation letter in hand, and says “got a minute?”.
Please visit www.osborne-group.com or contact us at 416-498-1550 to learn more about how you can benefit from interim management provided by The Osborne Group.
