Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night filled with a sense of dread? I’ve had a variety of things keep me up at night. I fall asleep pretty easily, but at about 4 AM, I sometimes wake up worrying. At one time, my big worry was the loss of an associate or a key paralegal.
I would toss and turn, worrying that the person was going to leave and that we’d be hurt because we wouldn’t have someone competent to do the work and make the client transition seamless. I figured the associate would give us two weeks’ notice (if we were lucky), and we’d be short on time to get someone else up and running. I calculated that we’d have a big problem because everyone else was maxed out and no one would have the time necessary to cover the workload. We’d quickly have unhappy clients and a mess on our hands.
Even when I was wide awake, I’d worry about losing a good employee. My anxiety caused me to behave differently than I might have otherwise. I’d make concessions in compensation and workload discussions that I might not have otherwise made. I felt like some of our lawyers were holding me hostage.
Thankfully, I found the antidote to those sleepless nights—at least those sleepless nights caused by that particular problem. I still wake up at 4 AM, but now it’s for different reasons.
The solution to the problem is constant interviewing. We’re always considering candidates, and we’ve always got someone ready to start in the immediate future if the need arises.
The interviewing is a time-sucking pain, but it’s not as big a pain as losing the employee without someone to take his or her place. If you’re always interviewing, you’ve always got someone ready to take the available slot. You’re always covered. You can always sleep, and you won’t negotiate from a position of weakness when an employee asks for something unreasonable.
We generally don’t need to advertise open positions. We’ve got a steady flow of resumes coming in the door. We tell applicants that we don’t have an opening at the moment but that we’re willing to talk to them now so that we can move forward if an opening arises. We just keep moving the process forward and replacing candidates as old candidates find other employment. When we need someone, we’ve got someone at a moment’s notice.
I sleep better now that I don’t worry about getting our clients taken care of by an excellent attorney. I sleep better knowing we’re prepared for the changes that are surely inevitable. Get moving on the interview process, and you’ll find yourself well rested and sleeping like a baby.
