What to take away
- 1.First 24 hours: listen, do not negotiate. Find the real reason.
- 2.Counter-offers work less than 20% of the time, average tenure nine months.
- 3.Protect knowledge first — three pieces, transfer documentation, fast.
First 24 hours: do not negotiate. Listen. Find out the real reason. The stated reason is rarely the real reason, and the real reason determines whether retention is possible at all.
Counter-offers work less than 20% of the time, and the people who accept them leave within nine months on average. The data on this has been consistent for decades.
What to do instead: protect the institutional knowledge. Within 48 hours, identify the three pieces of knowledge that live primarily in this person's head, and start the transfer documentation. Pay for their time during notice to do it well.
“If you do not preempt the conversation, the team writes the story for you.”
Talk to the team. Not a memo — actual conversations. Departures cluster. If you do not preempt the conversation, the team writes the story for you.
Try this Monday
- Pick your three most load-bearing humans. List their concentrated knowledge.
- Draft a one-page resignation playbook for yourself.
- Run a 'what if X leaves tomorrow?' exercise with your leadership team.
The systems angle
Knowing in advance which knowledge is concentrated in single people — and starting redundancy before you need it — is the work Aire makes visible.
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HR Asia on what to do when a key person quits. The hardest truth: counter-offers work less than 20% of the time, and the people who accept them leave within nine months. Protect the knowledge instead. https://hrasia.co/founder/key-person-quits
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