An Employee Left: What to Do About Your Business Keys

When someone leaves your business, getting their key back feels like the end of it. It is not quite. A returned key tells you nothing about whether a copy was made. The steps below help you decide how far to go, and how to make the next departure easier to handle.

A returned key settles less than it seems

Most keys can be copied at any hardware counter. Even keys stamped "do not duplicate" are sometimes copied anyway. So the real question is not whether you got the key back, but what a copy of that key would open.

Decide based on risk

Not every departure calls for new locks. Ask yourself a few honest questions:

• Which doors did their key open? The front door only, or the office, the stock room and the cash area too?
• How did they leave? On good terms, or after a dispute or a dismissal?
• Was a key ever lost or unaccounted for while they worked for you?
• What is behind those doors? Cash, stock, customer records, equipment.

If the answers point to real risk, change the cylinders on the doors that key opened, starting with the exterior doors.

One door or many

For a small shop with one or two doors, changing a couple of cylinders is simple. For a building with many doors and many key holders, changing every lock each time someone leaves is not practical. That is where a master key system helps.

How a master key system works

In a master key system, each person's key opens only the doors they need, while a manager's key opens a group of doors and the owner's key opens all of them. When one employee leaves, you change the cylinders their key opened, not the whole building.

Set up key control for next time

• Keep a key list: every key, its number, which doors it opens and who holds it.
• Have people sign for keys when they receive them and when they hand them back.
• Collect keys on the last day, as part of the same checklist as passwords and equipment.
• Give out as few keys as possible. Every extra key is one more to track.
• Use keypads on staff doors, where it suits, so a departing employee's code can simply be deleted.

Do it in the right order

Start with the doors that matter most: the main entrance and the rear door, then the rooms with cash, stock or records. Update the key list as each change is made, and hand out the new keys only to the people who need them. Our guide on six signs your business needs new locks covers the other moments when it is worth reviewing your locks.