Deadlines are stressful enough without having to deal with a sudden, unexpected departure from someone considered vital to the success of a project or company. Your team is out there putting in long hours away from their families, and then is suddenly rocked by someone leaving or (knock wood) taking seriously ill.

How your employees respond to an unexpected departure says a lot about both your corporate culture and your skills as a leader. Will they wilt under the pressure or rise to the occasion? By planning for the worst, you can minimize the damage that a sudden departure could hypothetically inflict upon your company.

Below you will find various safeguards to help protect against the potential frenzy that an unexpected departure by an indispensable employee might cause.

Training in Key Tasks

If there are key skills that are necessary to completing a certain project, make sure as many employees as possible have the requisite training in order to prevent any lag. If one man goes down for whatever reason, the next in line should be able to step up without missing a beat. If you are a small business or start-up, your business will be indelibly hurt if a mission critical employee leaves at a crucial point and no one is there to pick up the slack.

Spread Out the Relationships

I know, relationships in business are complex. One person feels like he has ownership over certain clients, and thus other employees don’t gain that interpersonal connection that they should. The trouble with this is when that employee leaves, his client may jump ship with him or simply choose not to continue working with your company. In order to prevent this, introduce clients to other workers capable of handling those duties in the event that the account man departs. If your clients are able to transition to working with a separate employee, it’s less likely your organization will hit any snags or lose business.

Job Descriptions

While they may seem like a waste of precious time to young companies, job descriptions become invaluable when mission critical employees leave. With detailed documents that list every task each employee is responsible for, your team will know what to do if they need to take over new duties. Your employees should take 10 minutes every few months to update their job descriptions. Roles are fluid and responsibilities can change. It can’t hurt to have documents that get consistently updated.

Consider the Tools Used

This fits snugly under both the job description and training umbrellas, but deserves its own category. If your employees are using programs such as Salesforce, Google Analytics, Dropbox, or any of the thousands currently available to growing businesses, that needs to be documented somewhere. Passwords need to be written down and best practices need to be noted. If the employee that runs your Hubspot suddenly leaves, that expenditure can go from a great boon to a financial sinkhole if no one else knows how to use it.

In a perfect world, you’d keep all the hard-working employees that have helped you along the way. Realistically, that’s not possible. People grow and change; some will eventually leave you. It’s up to you to prepare your team for the worst-case scenario so that you will ultimately succeed no matter who leaves and who stays.