Take one
person out.

Detect

Assess

Secure

Key-person risk exists when a critical process step may only be performed by a single person. If that person is unavailable — through illness, holiday or resignation — the step comes to a standstill. This only becomes visible when you measure coverage per process step instead of qualifications per person.

By setting a minimum staffing for each critical process step and continuously comparing it against the actual state. Skill Audit does exactly that: for each step it shows how many people can perform it with valid evidence — and how many there should be.

A skills matrix shows what individuals are missing. Skill Audit shows whether the process step is covered. The difference comes from the requirement being derived from products, processes and roles rather than maintained freely by hand.

By building onboarding around the role rather than around the person. The role's target profile remains when the person leaves — and the successor's evidence builds up over the course of onboarding, not in a handover week at the end.

As a rule of thumb, at least two with independent competence and a third in onboarding. What's decisive, though, is criticality: a step that blocks the order flow needs more coverage than one that can be postponed.

Yes. Coverage, minimum staffing and evidence validity are operational questions that don't depend on any standard. If you also work to ISO/IEC 17025, you'll find the matching registers and evidence formats on the ISO 17025 page.