- I think the most demotivating part of Harper’s job is the fact that she is now doing twice the work now that Jose is gone but is still behind so its as if she isn’t making any real progress and is always playing catch up.
- If I was an HR manager the advice I would give David is to give Harper a schedule of availability that he has in order to meet with her one on one so he may answer any questions or concerns that she has so she can be guided better, but also to possibly have the talk about her taking over Jose’s position and getting a promotion.
- The downside of losing Harper is that you would have to hire and teach a new person what Harper knows how to do very well and also the amount of work that would have to be made up from losing now two employees would be too much to make up.
Of the eight effective retention strategies I believe the best one that would work best in Harper’s situation is number 4 which is Create a Culture of Open Communication considering how that was a big point for her with her previous boss Jose.
The loss of institutional knowledge can be a really big deal – while documenting processes “should” be a given, it so often is not and once a key employee leaves there is a HUGE gap. Plus it can take months or even a year for someone to get fully up to speed in a new role, even if they are a great employee.
One thing I am not clear on is whether Jose was replaced by David or not – at first I thought he was (hence Harper taking on some of his work) but in another read I am less sure if David has a separate role or replaced Jose in the role he was in (with a restructure to have him oversee the whole department). I took out a piece I had in my reply on replacing Jose for that reason, but it leaves the question of why Harper is handling so much of Jose’s work even more in the air.