What If Everyone Stayed Home?
One of the greatest risks any organization faces is that every morning their staff wake up and make a critical decision: to get up and go to work.
What if one day they all decided to stay home?
In the real world, this may seem unrealistic. Yet every day an organization somewhere is dealing with the loss of one or many employees, for short, long or unknown durations. Every more disquieting are the ones they don’t know are planning to leave.
One easy example to imagine is when organizations lose employees during a labour strike. I once watched half of an organization’s workforce walk off the job for five months – the economic, human and reputational impact was enormous. In my time in healthcare, the mere threat of a labour disruption could cause weeks of contingency planning and cancelations of thousands of patient appointments – even if it was averted at the 11th hour. The only upside in labour relations is that you usually see it coming. And there are ways to plan and mitigate risk during bargaining, conciliation or arbitration.
We also lose staff is to sick time or injury. Even here there is some predictability - such as cold and flu season – but few organizations plan for it and the pandemic showed us the worst case scenario of what happens when we don’t have contingency plans. However, good occupational health & safety teams and/or the public health system can help with prevention (e.g. vaccines), reduce time loss and promote safe and timely return to work.
A third example occurs when employees make a conscious decision to leave your organization. This is not always a bad thing. Sometimes an employee gets offered the right career move or makes a decision to return to school to upgrade their formal education. In fact, if handled well, the employer can be involved in this process (e.g. secondment, education leave) and able to retain or recruit them back in the future. But in other cases, staff leave because of poor managers, lack of opportunity or unsafe working conditions. And often there are signs that you can pick up on if you are doing regular employee surveys, having regular performance check-ins and conducting stay and exit interviews.
Once someone leaves, it can take a lot of time and money to replace the person or persons. In the meantime, the gap could have significant negative consequences for the organization, customers and/or other team members. This is exacerbated if there is a shortage of qualified workers, and if there is nobody inside the organization ready to step in to fill a critical vacancy – even temporarily.
How do we safeguard against these risks?
As mentioned above, there are many ways organizations can identify risk, monitor and prevent the loss of talent. It starts with intention – at every level.
One of the best ways is to develop a strategic workforce plan and develop a scorecard to monitor key metrics. Identifying the most critical skills and risk areas helps prioritize where you invest what are often limited resources.
To illustrate, consider the following questions:
Which person or team would you be most concerned about if they left you unexpectedly today? Why?
What specific skill, knowledge, or relationships do you need to achieve your strategic objectives that you don’t have today?
Where in your organization are you getting the feeling there may be underlying issues that are creating risk – such as attrition, grievances or underperformance?
One of the most recent hot topics has been the return to the office post-pandemic. While most organizations are moving back to full time in the office, there are still risks if you don’t understand the current sentiment of your staff, the flexibility that your competitors may be offering and the chance that key staff may be at risk. I recall a situation where a department manager at a large manufacturing organization decided to order everyone back to the office five days a week. In response, an entire team of engineers left and joined another company that supported remote work. The impact was devastating. In fact, as they went to recruit replacements, they likely found that most applicants wanted some degree of flexibility to work hybrid or remote. Despite the feeling that everyone is returning to the office, recent research suggests that not much has changed in the amount of work done remote and hybrid – or the demand for it - since 2022 (Gallup, September 2025).
In another example, I was leading a key talent discussion with leaders at a technology company. They had set ambitious goals to move into new lines of business. As we went through each division, one leader articulated their fear that they didn’t have the right people or skills to achieve their objectives for the coming year. Suddenly several other leaders raised their hands and admitted the same concern. It was the elephant in the room. The conversation immediately shifted to what those skills were and whether they could upskill their existing teams, if they needed to acquire new talent from outside, or both. This led to an immediate focus on recruitment and what kind of compensation and employment experience would be required to attract this talent in a highly competitive market.
As with all strategic planning and risk management conversations, understanding your people risk is as important as competitive, financial or cyber risk analysis. If you are interested in this topic as it relates to your organization, I would be happy to chat.
Recommended Reading: Hybrid Work in Retreat? Barely. Gallup, September 3, 2025.
Recommended Listening: Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Tales from the Acoustic Planet. I know - banjo music? But if you haven’t heard Bela Fleck, it’s time to have your imagination of what is possible on this instrument stretched - from bluegrass to jazz to chamber music.