In most small businesses there’s one person who knows where the bodies are buried: which cupboard the router lives in, what the Wi-Fi password actually is, why you can’t turn off that one ancient PC, and where the domain name is registered.
Then one day they hand in their notice, and you realise the company’s entire IT knowledge is about to walk out the door with four weeks’ notice.
Don’t panic. Here’s the playbook.
Week one: get the keys back
Before anything else, make sure the business, not the individual, controls its own accounts. The list that matters:
- Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace admin: who else has admin rights? If the answer is “nobody”, fix that today.
- Domain name and DNS: where is yourbusiness.co.uk registered, and whose email is on the account? If it’s registered to a personal email address, transfer it now. Losing control of your domain means losing your email and website in one go.
- Router and firewall passwords: written down somewhere the business can reach, not in someone’s head.
- Software licences and subscriptions: anything registered to their personal email needs to move to a business-owned mailbox (a shared
it@yourbusiness.co.ukworks well). - Password manager or “the spreadsheet”: however credentials are stored, the business needs its own copy under its own control.
Week two: write down what they know
Sit them down with a cup of tea and a blank document, and capture the tribal knowledge:
- What breaks regularly, and what do you do when it does?
- Which suppliers do we use, and who’s the contact?
- What’s the one thing you’d warn your replacement about?
You’re not aiming for polished documentation. You’re aiming for the notes that turn a 3am crisis into a 20-minute fix.
Week three: check what they could still access
When they leave, their account gets disabled, but that’s the visible bit. The bits people miss: mailbox rules forwarding email externally, personal devices still syncing company files, remote access tools installed “temporarily” in 2024, and shared accounts whose passwords they know. A proper leaver’s process covers all of it. If you don’t have one, this is the moment to create it.
And then: never be here again
The uncomfortable truth is that this scramble was avoidable. The fix isn’t hiring a full-time replacement; most businesses under a couple of hundred staff can’t justify one. The fix is making sure knowledge lives in systems rather than people:
- Admin access held by the business, with at least two people able to reach it
- A one-page asset list: what you own, where it is, when it’s due for replacement
- Documented basics: passwords in a manager, suppliers listed, renewal dates in a calendar
- Someone on call who already knows your setup, so you’re not explaining everything from scratch mid-crisis
That last one is a big part of what we do. And if you’re mid-handover right now and the leaving date is looming, we can run the whole checklist above with you. Start with a free 30-minute call or ring us on 0141 474 0051.