When a senior leader from the top management decides to put an end to the relationship with the organization it comes as a shock for several reasons. The shock can be heart-wrenching because this will not only impact the relationship with their clients and also the brand images that he helped build in the industry.

While the company has to move on following the departure the process behind making everything normal goes through a rough phase. This puts a lot of pressure on the HR Head to sail through the transition period and do the damage control.

And there are other implications of key executives moving out of organization. If the company is publically listed it’s likely to fall flat on the stock exchange immediately. This might also mean some of his loyal members in the organization may tag along with the boss and join his next company.

Sharing his thought about the impact, Sandeep Tyagi, Director, Human Resources, Samsung, states in scenarios like this succession planning plays a key role. The organization needs to be strong when it comes to people processes or policies.

“To succeed, every company should consolidate their talent pipeline. Due to such processes, large organizations are growing, and they have thousands of employees. Promoters and owners of big corporate houses don’t sit in all the branches, but managers operate these companies,” Tyagi argues. 

HR’s Job

Industry experts believe that these things do matter, but it depends upon the culture of the company on how they deal with it. If they are not internally strong, it’ll take time for the organization to bounce back. But now a days company strategize in advance for any such mishap.

Great HR’s have a knack for keeping their employees so satisfied they rarely want to leave. But, even then the HR heads experience a departing team member at some point in time, and when essential people quit, they understand that the team day to day operations is likely to disrupt.

These exits do create tremors in the company, but the fact can’t be ignored that most of the exits are planned transition because the person will serve the notice and then move on.

“The real problem comes when an unplanned situation arrives what we call in the HR fraternity termed it as ‘hit by a truck.’ In such cases the organization has to re-aligned the company,” said, Vipul Dave, Head HR, Cosmo Films.

Dave also mentioned that these situations could be easily handled if the organization has done the succession planning way in advance.

Bounce Back

According to the industry leaders, the leadership transition and movement will happen, but the question arrives how agile your organization is? People are going to quit, but one has to check the risk status of the company and find out if the employees are high or low at risk.

Key leadership exits add a dent in the company, but at the same time, it depends on the company’s bouncing back capability and how quickly the organization realign the process and maintain everything back to normal.

Magic Bricks CHRO, Anil Kumar Misra feels such situations do impact the company, but one needs to find out different solutions for different people because one solution doesn’t fit all.

When asked, if he tries to convince the outgoing employees? He replied, “There is no fun in retaining somebody who is hell-bent to move out.”   

Today, a lot of multinationals are investing in the process for the organization and not only play with star players or else they will collapse. Companies are moving away from the individual-centric mindset to avoid such incident.

Organizations do feel they prepared are they for such scenario, but still, some of the exits cost them at a very high level. Exits will always be there, but companies need to build an internal shield that protects them from huge impacts such as mass exit, fall of share prices, revenues and brand name.