Don't let all the information about how jobs are performed stay locked up inside your employees' heads. Be sure tasks and procedures are documented, and make sure more than one person knows how to do every job in your company.
Getting your key employees to teach others what they do may not be easy. Often the employee will worry that doing so makes it easy for you to replace them.
If you sense that type of resistance, remind them that they are important to your business and that every job in your company needs to be documented. Without such documentation in a small company, the company could fail if an employee had an accident and couldn't work for several months. Then there would be no job to return to when they recuperated.
Don't forget to document your own critical tasks, too. If you fall ill and can't work for months, the employees aren't likely to stick around very long if no one knows how to get them their paychecks.
More >> Keep Your Best Employees from Flying the Coop
