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You have employees that determine their logins and passwords, and can one day no longer show for work either by their own decision (new job) or not (death, accident). Your firm is the one which suffers when that person leaves and no one can access the records on his or her computer.
When you hire anyone, tell them they must complete a current list of their LOGINS and passwords and forward it to your human relations department. Do it periodically (once per month or once per quarter) and keep it privately in their personnel file. Restrict access to it only in the event that the person is terminated or leaves the company.
Which of these crises would happen if one key person left unexpectedly (giving no notice) leaving no one with access to their programs?
- The person who performs payroll with an outside agency and is the only one with access to submitting payroll remotely.
- The person who performs wire transfers weekly with your company bank for depositing state and local income tax, federal income and social security taxes, child support, court ordered garnishments and all other financial transactions that travel either through your line of credit, sweep accounts, money market accounts or savings accounts, quit without notice.
- The sales person who manages the largest customer accounts in your organization leaves to work for your competitor since you stupidely cut her monthly incentive program by 2/3. Your remaining sales personnel cannot access the sales person’s email requests or new incoming sales orders. What sales orders are missing or never recorded? You now know why all major accounts need a secondary backup sales representative assigned to the account.
- The person in your office who has online access to the company’s lockbox holding patents, copyrights, private financial data, contracts or other important documents at the bank.
- The president’s secretary who pays the boss’ private bills and keeps track of his savings account and also reconciles his checking account through logins and passwords.
- The office manager or administrative secretary who serves as the main online contact with your company’s main credit card account with over 50 corporate credit cards.
- The travel secretary who controls all of the travel credit cards, travel points, rewards programs, online passwords and logins for making all company travel arrangements.
- The collections person who logins in, enters her password (which is changed each month) and then scans all incoming receivables checks at his or her desk.
