What Would Happen if Your Entire Staff Quit Tomorrow?

I was reading a fun article in the New York Times yesterday about the training US Navy pilots undergo to bail out of doomed aircraft – which, of course, led me to think about how this related to corporate team building in NYC and elsewhere (alas, what doesn’t? Behold, the entrepreneur’s curse).

For a long time now, I’ve been hammering away in this blog about how it is more important than ever for companies to retain their best talent, in order to remain competitive in an increasingly unstable economy. Yet still, the simple fact is that employees leave jobs; either of their own free will and accord or otherwise, everyone eventually moves on (hence the oft-repeated HR and management phrase, “nobody is irreplaceable.”).

As a business owner, though, few things strike terror into my heart more than the thought of a mass exodus of staff. After years of building a business up, growing it to the point where key functions have been delegated out to dedicated employees, what could be more terrifying then to suddenly be faced with doing all of that work… alone?

<Shudder>

However unlikely, are you prepared to handle a scenario where you come into work tomorrow, and find:

1. No administrative support to answer phones, set up appointments, makes photocopies or manage contracts & billing?

1. No sales people making calls to prospects?

1. No marketing people to get your message and brand out to the world?

1. No PR team to shape and monitor your company’s image?

1. No Web team to manage your Internet site or social media?

1. No IT staff to un-freeze the computers, expunge erased Emails or replace ink drives?

1. You have no idea where anything is kept on the server, or in your physical office space?

1. All of the institutional knowledge and memory of your company is completely gone, save your own?

It’s a scary thought, right?

A common refrain is often overheard among disgruntled workers: “I can’t believe they treat us this way! If we were to all walk out of here tomorrow, they’d be totally f*cked.” Fortunately, most managers, employers and employees alike are wise enough to know that this is more venting than anything else, and a scenario which is unlikely to occur.

And yet, it DOES actually happen.

I can think of two relatively recent scenarios off the top of my head where the unthinkable did indeed come to pass. Last summer, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s staff quit en-mass over the direction of the campaign; and in 2010, the staff of Gorilla Coffee, an independent coffee shop and “micro-roastery” with a cult following where I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, had their entire staff up and quit one day, as a protest of their treatment by management.

In both cases, the business (in Newt’s case, campaign) was momentarily hobbled, yet quickly refilled the ranks with new staff – it’s still a bad economy, after all, and sudden vacancies of critical positions don’t stay open for very long. In short, they bounced back, and as of this writing, both Gorilla and Gingrich are stronger than they were before the mass exodus.

But that still doesn’t answer the question I’ve posed: what would happen if YOUR entire staff quit tomorrow?