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Written by Eric Gockel
We’ve worked with many organizations and associations that have gone through staff turnover or a new board every year. The first few days (or weeks) can be daunting for the latest team members trying to find their way around all the communication channels and project management systems.
The best place to start is with existing staff or board members who have been part of the process in the last year that can help new team members with the usual questions like what’s the website login, or who has the PO box key?
Documentation
Try documenting your processes and logins in a common place for your department or association. This could be in a wiki, a Basecamp account, or whatever creates the least friction for your team/board/family.
Create a checklist of every service with a login and ensure that someone on your team has access and keeps it current. For associations with new board members and chairs every year, try using role-based emails like admin@yourassociation.org instead of personal or work emails, as people leave boards and companies, making it difficult to reset passwords and gain access to accounts.
For example, suppose you lose your login to your GoDaddy account and can’t access the email that set it up. In that case, you’ll have to go thru many hoops to regain access, including faxing over articles of incorporation and the like. You should check now; I’ll wait.
Banking Logins
If your website has an e-commerce component for purchases, who has logins for the payment systems like authorize.net or Stripe? If you’re still using the login that your treasurer or controller from two years ago set up, you should get that updated ASAP while you still (hopefully) can contact them, and they still have access to their old work email used to set up the logins.
CMS and Website Updates
Ideally, the person moving on should sit with the new team member and walk through making essential website updates and the like. For example, do they have the contact info for the previous firm that set up (or is managing) the website? Are backups being made regularly?
This might be an excellent time to schedule an intro call with the firm tasked with managing your website to introduce the new team contact to the vendor/agency and discuss any updates or issues to address in the coming year.
Be sure to update your website agency with whom the latest key internal stakeholders are, as well as their day-to-day contact(s).
Even though you have a firm managing your website, you should still have logins for everything. This includes your website domain, hosting, FTP (for files), analytics (i.e., Google), email administration, and any other third-party tools you may use, like Mailchimp for email marketing.
Ensure the logins are up to date and you have access to all the emails used for the various logins if you need to reset any passwords, which you should do regularly (i.e., at least yearly).
Social Media and Email Marketing
This item sometimes falls thru the cracks if no one is tasked with overseeing, and someone just “fills in” occasionally.
The social media accounts should also probably have role-based email/accounts if you have rotating staff/volunteers. Passwords on ALL accounts should also be changed at this time, if not more often. Who responds to emails, Facebook, and Twitter posts? Document and enforce.
Communicate and Over Communicate
We try to make a practice of always at least communicating with two contacts at a client, not just one, so there’s some redundancy and more than one person is in the loop. Granted, with larger clients, we’re probably emailing six or more contacts in various roles, but getting the other partner(s) involved for smaller companies can’t hurt either.
Whenever clients ask how to do something or what the login is for a project, we point them to a repository where we keep that information so they can refer to it in the future. Then, if they need it later, it’ll be there for them and anyone else assuming their role later.
Admin URLs
If you made it this far and you’re just looking for help on what the login URL might be for your website’s CMS, you can try one of these popular variations:
- www.website.com/admin
- www.website.com/administrator
- www.website.com/user
- www.website.com/login
- www.website.com/login.aspx
- www.website.com/wp-login.php
- www.website.com/admin.php
- www.website.com/wp-admin
Summary
By implementing these steps, organizations can facilitate a smoother onboarding process for new team members and ensure vital information and access are properly documented. In addition, effectively managing transitions enhances organizational efficiency and minimizes disruptions caused by staff turnover or board changes.