What to do when a key employee leaves company

I came across this situation many times in the work places i worked. The management and team panic as if there is no tomorrow when the key employee leaves. But believe me in all the places i worked were able to with stand this transitions. It’s not going to be a cake walk at the same time not as difficult as climbing the mount everest. All that matters is Perseverance.

I have divided this topic into 3 steps.

1.Fair attempts to retain

2.Transition

3.Preventing the situation

 

If  it is decided that the employee gonna leaves the company at any cost you can skip the first point.

1.Fair attempts to retain

First thing first retrospect the reason for leaving. If it is a legitimate reason evaluate that in the context of the individual and the company. And make sure that the action you are taking is align with the company but not of individual interest. For example if you try to counter offer keep in mind of the upcoming consequences with similar situation. Many other employees may be tempted to or provoked to think of leaving company when they come to know about this. If you feel it is good for the employee congratulate him and wish him all the best. End of the day we should be at least friends.

2.Transition

1. Motivating the team

So once you decide that nothing can stop him from leaving the company get ready for transition.

As soon as the team members hear about the news they will be distracted from the work and will be in a confused state. Thinking about consequences they are going to face with out the key employee and also wonder if they also need to think on the same lines.

First is to setup a meeting with the team and convey the news.

By setting a meeting you are keep the speculations to an end. Start prepare them for the situation. Make them clear that team work is the way to success than individual contributions. Give them examples of how perseverance leads to success. Make them understand the magic of team work.Convey them

Even if we are in deep trouble we try our best before accepting the defeat.

2. Transition plan

Once the team members are settled ask about their views of transition plans.

Identify the next person who can step into the key employee shoes. Don’t worry much about the experience focus on the attitude and capabilities.  He may not match the key employee immediately but eventually he will. In the mean time sort out how you can mitigate the affect with the team work.

3.Preventing the situation

We can’t prevent this situation completely but we can have some measures to mitigate the affect.

coming soon.

 

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Rails Devise Authentication with email confirmation

Steps to configure:

 

1. Install devise -gem ‘devise’
2. rails g devise:install
3. rails g devise user
4. make sure :confirmable and :registerable are uncommented. Uncomments the fields for confirmable in migration.
5. rake db:migrate

6. config.reconfirmable = false

Settings for mailer:

config.action_mailer.raise_delivery_errors = true
config.action_mailer.perform_deliveries = true
config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :smtp
config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = {
:address => ‘smtp.office365.com’,
:port => ‘587’,
:authentication => :login,
:user_name => ‘useremail@domainname.com’,
:password => ‘userpassword’,
:domain => ‘domain name’,
:enable_starttls_auto => true
}

in development.rb

 

for more info https://github.com/plataformatec/devise/wiki/How-To:-Add-:confirmable-to-Users

Issues:

Net::SMTPFatalError (550 5.7.60 SMTP; Client does not have permissions to send as this sender.

Solution: In devise.rb make sure

config.mailer_sender = ‘admin@*****.com’ refers to the right email and right domain.

 

Shopping Cart Rails

Recently over the past few weeks i am trying to create a comprehensive shopping cart leveraging on existing rails gems , css frameworks and cloud platforms. Trying to stop reinventing the wheel and also not loosing the flexibility to customize.

The cart i am going to show is going to have the following features.

• User login and logout.
• Admin console to manage Products and Orders.
• Logic to add/remove items to shopping cart.
• Payment gateway.

After few days of searching, watching videos and tutorials on shopping carts.I came up with the following stack.

• Foundation (CSS framework) –  for responsiveness which has ready made templates and components so that we don’t need to worry about look and feel. Even it is very easy to customize things.
• Devise gem – For authentication. I don’t need to elaborate this as it is the best gem i used for authentication. We can even generate views with it with out writing a single line of code.