Many companies put substantial time and effort into creating a robust onboarding process for their new hires. But, with one study1 finding that 53% of employees are actively looking for a new job, it’s just as important to develop a robust offboarding program to ensure employees leave your organization on a positive note.
Employee turnover is never easy, but a successful offboarding program can help you run a smooth transition, supply you with valuable employee feedback, and provide an opportunity to boost your company’s brand.
In this blog, we’ll discuss what offboarding is and why it’s important, and we'll give you the top seven steps to take to offboard your employees effectively.
Employee offboarding, or exit management, involves managing the employee experience when staff members are transitioning out of a company, whether for a voluntary resignation, layoff, retirement, or termination.
The employee’s direct manager and your human resources (HR) team typically handle offboarding to ensure a smooth transition for the company, the employee, and their teammates.
You should aim to part with the employee on good terms while tying up loose ends, such as capturing critical institutional knowledge for ongoing projects, conducting an exit interview, and completing relevant HR paperwork.
To stay organized, you can design an offboarding checklist to help your HR team and other managers understand what will happen during an employee’s offboarding process.
The process you create will vary based on your company policy, organization size, the employee’s position, and why they’re leaving. Still, many of the key steps on your offboarding checklist will likely be the same regardless of these factors.
Designing a positive offboarding process offers several advantages for a company. Not only does it help keep an employee’s exit as friendly and non-confrontational as possible, but it’s also a vital part of your organization’s employee experience and long-term success.
Here are five benefits of having an organized offboarding program:
Now that we’ve mentioned why an organized offboarding program is essential let’s review the seven steps you should take when offboarding workers.
In most cases, the employee’s manager will know the employee and their reasons for exiting best. Therefore, you’ll want to work directly with the manager to find out why their employee is leaving so you can customize their offboarding process.
For example, a retiring employee may have a more straightforward offboarding process than someone you’ve terminated or laid off. Similarly, the information you can gather from a worker resigning to be a full-time parent will differ from someone leaving for reasons related to the company culture.
In all cases, ensure the employee’s manager is closely involved in the person’s entire offboarding process so they feel continued support during the days leading up to their exit.
While telling your staff about an employee’s departure is sometimes uncomfortable, it’s best to speak openly and honestly with your team about why their coworker is leaving—whether their departure is voluntary or involuntary.
Communicating the information once you finalize the exit prevents gossip from spreading. The longer you wait to share the news, the more likely your other employees will fill in the gaps with information that may or may not be accurate.
If an employee leaves, communicate their last day of employment and other relevant information, such as who will take over their job responsibilities, before rumors start. It’s also important to let your remaining employees know they can come to you with any questions or concerns to ensure they feel supported moving forward.
Depending on the employee’s role, you may need to notify outside parties. For example, if the employee is client-facing, you may need to inform their clients of the transition process. If the worker is in a customer-facing or public role, you may decide to share certain information with the public about their departure.
Regardless, speak about the offboarding employee with fairness and gratitude for their service at your organization. A successful departure protects you from retaliation and legal issues. It also goes a long way toward cultivating a long-lasting and positive relationship with the employee as a potential customer or business contact.
Like the hiring process, an employee’s exit requires substantial paperwork. Your HR team can help the offboarding employee navigate any remaining administrative tasks. Still, you should consult with your HR and legal team beforehand to ensure they have all the necessary employee information to run an effective offboarding process.
Be sure you include the following paperwork and administrative tasks in your offboarding process:
Employees take their skills and knowledge of the job when they leave. If you don’t collect that valuable knowledge, you could be leaving future employees without the necessary information they could use to do their jobs effectively.
If you can’t find a replacement before the employee leaves, you should start a transfer of knowledge as soon as they give notice. You can ask them to create a document detailing helpful information, including any tips or tricks their replacement may find useful.
The following is essential information that you may want to ask your employee for:
The exit interview is one of the most critical parts of the offboarding procedure. An exit interview is an excellent opportunity to gather insights into what your company is doing well, what you could improve on, and how their overall experience has been.
This feedback can give you insight into areas you haven’t noticed, like workload, company culture, and compensation. By asking the right exit interview questions, you can gain valuable insight into what your employees really feel versus how you think they feel.
If your employees are uncomfortable giving honest feedback one-on-one with their direct supervisor, you can opt for a detailed questionnaire through HR. This way, you might get more specific and honest answers.
A few sample questions to include in an exit interview process are:
While these questions are just examples, you can customize your exit survey to include more specific questions about your company. Specific questions can help your company grow so you can target talented candidates and retain your current employees.
The exit interview is likely the last experience an employee will have at your company, so it’s essential to prioritize it. Any information you gather is valuable and important, even if you don’t like what you hear.
Another essential part of the offboarding experience involves securing data and revoking employee access to company systems and databases. Yet a recent survey found that nearly 47% of employees3 say they still have access to company accounts of previous employers.
Not removing your outgoing employees from all necessary company accounts leaves you open to security breaches, communication mishaps, and even delays in transferring the former employee’s system access to their replacement. You can choose to maintain access until the employee’s last day. However, you can always revoke access to company systems sooner.
The following are systems and activities you should remove an employee’s access from when they leave your company:
When employees leave, many of their projects and daily tasks may be put on hold. Sometimes, their teammates must cover their former coworker’s responsibilities, but this can lead to burnout and a stressful work environment—even with a successful transfer of knowledge ahead of time.
If there’s no plan to hire a new employee immediately, you’ll need to create a temporary work plan to ensure your remaining staff can meet business needs productively without the potential for burnout. Evaluate the work your departing employee manages so you can reassign prioritized tasks and remove any unnecessary work.
Be transparent with your employees so they can prepare for the changes and potentially additional workload during this temporary situation while you work with your HR team to backfill the position as soon as possible.
If you’re not planning to refill the employee’s position anytime soon, you can work with the affected team’s manager to restructure the team to redistribute the workload on a more permanent basis. This way, you can focus on finding the best person for the role on your own time—without overloading your remaining employees.
Offboarding is the last step in any good employer-employee work relationship. But it’s a vital part of the employee lifecycle. A well-rounded offboarding program will keep your company productive while transitioning from one employee to the next and give you valuable feedback you can use to improve your overall business operations and enhance the employee experience.
A positive offboarding experience can motivate your employees to continue advocating for your organization long after they leave. So consider your offboarding program another effective way of attracting and retaining top talent in this competitive labor market.
This article was originally published on November 16, 2022. It was last updated on December 18, 2023.