When should you tell your staff that you are selling your pharmacy?

Many pharmacy owners have worked with their staff for years and are uncomfortable keeping secrets from them.

However, it is always recommended that you operate the pharmacy with an “ordinary course” mindset until the sale is final, or until the very last possible moment. In any case, we will let you know when the right time is.

Knowledge is Power

Once you tell your staff of your intention to sell, the power shifts from you to them. Your staff may be happy for you, but they are naturally going to worry about themselves when they should be worrying about serving your patients. They may “mentally check out”, start looking for another job, etc.

Any loss in script count can cause concern to a potential buyer and may change the value of the pharmacy overall.

Don’t Give Your Staff Leverage

One of the last things you want is your staff making wage or other demands of a new buyer. Buyers really don’t like when this happens. When you tell your staff in advance, they potentially have the ability to start making demands of the deal. It is rare, but it happens, especially with powerful techs and administrators that run operations. You and the buyer have so much more power, control and options if you tell your staff “the store has been sold” rather than “we are in a process of selling our store”. In the first case, staff can wedge themselves in the deal process. In the second, they cannot.

Things Change

You may have a signed deal and closing date today, but a signed deal is not a closed deal. What happens if you tell your staff you are selling, and then the buyer pulls out due to unforeseen circumstances? Now you have staff that have no idea what their future is.

 Conclusion

 We understand that it can be difficult to operate with a “secret” from people who you trust and who trust you, but it is important to do so in order to protect the outcome of the sale.

If you still feel guilty about this, tell yourself: “I worked hard for decades in this store and right now, the person I need to be most loyal to is myself. I need to take care of myself so that I can later take care of everyone else.”

And if you still feel uncomfortable, you can say that you have a professional advisor called ColonyRX managing the process and they insisted that things remain confidential. You can then give them our phone number or ask us to call them. We often speak to staff at different parts of the process and are glad to help with difficult staff members.

Call Colony today for a free no-hassle discussion about our services.