3 Essential Steps Before You Fire an Employee

3 Essential Steps Before You Fire an Employee

3 Essential Steps Before You Fire an Employee

What are the 3 essential steps before you fire an employee? Employees need access to various business accounts, but what happens to those passwords when they leave or get fired? Nobody likes to think of firing their employees but nonetheless, it’s a responsibility every business owner must face.

Most of the time, the former employee leaves under good terms. If you’re lucky, they’ll even manage hand-over to their replacement so your productivity losses are minimal. Other employees may leave your business reluctantly or in a storm of anger and suspicion. While you’ll have very different feelings about the two scenarios, the risk to your business remains high until action is taken. Here are 3 steps you can take to protect your business from retaliation and other password-related disasters.

Limit Employee Access to a need-to-know basis

You might be surprised how often a new employee is presented the entire business on a platter when their actual job requires little more than a computer login. Accounts, strategy, customer details, industry secrets…all those sensitive aspects of your business that have made it a success – exposed. A better policy is to limit access to only what the employee needs to do their job. Rather than view it as a lack of trust, your employees will appreciate the care you’ve taken to protect your business (and their job). It also helps keeps them from being overwhelmed, confused or tempted if the situation ever turns sour.

Change Employee Passwords Fast

It takes about a week before fired employee passwords are changed. This is the one type of delay your business can’t afford. In 2017, an ex-employee from the American College of Education held their entire email system to ransom for $200,000 after an unhappy exit. Stories of others stealing client databases are also common, especially as they leave to start their own business or work for a competitor. It’s not just full-time employees either, contract and part-time employees such as social media managers and customer support email specialists often have access to more of your business than you might imagine. Recent rulings make it easier for business owners to prosecute former employees who access their systems. The best option is to change passwords fast – even before your employee knows they’re fired. This lessens the chance of revenge attacks and opportunistic access.

Use A Password Manager

If you have good password manager like LastPass, reducing your risk becomes mostly automated. Password managers keep your logins in a central vault that only you can see. It can be shared based on business roles/needs. There’s is an option to share passwords without letting employees see them in plain-text. Instead of writing passwords down somewhere and manually entering them each time, they’ll be able to connect securely with a click. Plus, you can revoke the share at any time. If their role changes or they’re fired, you can use the dashboard to see who is having access to what and add/revoke at will. If you’re not sure what that employee has been up to, you can also generate reports of their history.

We can help you set up password management and lock down your network. Call us at 570.235.1946 or visit our Contact Page