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Summary: A solid employee offboarding process ensures smooth transitions and lasting positive impressions. This guide covers creating the process, post-offboarding steps, and tips to wrap up the plan effectively.
Starting a new job can be stressful, but what about the stress of leaving a job? All too often no one really thinks about it. After all, starting a new job is all about learning new procedures and meeting new people. Leaving a job is a choice people make, so they should be happy and comfortable with it, right?
Not necessarily.
And even if they are ultimately happy about leaving or happy about the new opportunity that they’re taking on, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t also going to miss some of what they’re leaving behind. And that’s just looking at it from the employee’s perspective. What about the company?
Talking to an employee who is leaving can help the company by:
- Letting them know why that employee is leaving
- Providing general feedback about what working for the company is like
- Providing specific feedback about coworkers, subordinates, or bosses that the employee may not have felt comfortable giving while still working with the company
- Providing information about what the next person in that job role may need to know
- Improving the opinion that the employee has about the company (i.e. the company really cares about them)
And this is just a start. There’s actually a lot that you can learn and that the employee can learn about you and your company when you go through an offboarding process. But let’s back up a little before we get too ahead of ourselves.
Understanding Employee Offboarding
You already know about onboarding. It’s the process of helping new employees get up to speed in a new job. But what is offboarding?
Offboarding is about helping employees to leave your company.
By going through an offboarding process you’re going to benefit through all of the different ways we’ve already outlined above. But it will require you to go through an actual process, not just wave and escort them out the door.
Chances are you’ve worked out an onboarding process that helps employees get started strong and that makes sure they are ready to jump in with your team. But have you even though about an offloading process?
Considering the fact that employee offboarding is a relatively new topic … chances are you haven’t done as much thinking about it. That’s what we’re going to help you with.
Creating An Employee Offboarding Process
So, what is the process? What do you need to do to make the offboarding process as comprehensive, useful, and simple as possible?
First, take a look at your onboarding process and get an idea of what that entails. That should give you a bit of a jumpstart on what your offboarding should look like. And you should definitely be getting the same people involved in the process.
1. Get Your Managers Prepared
The offboarding process should really start with your management team. Or at least, your management team in conjunction with your HR team.
These are the two people/teams that are going to know first about an employee leaving the company and they’re the ones that need to go through all of the paperwork and the details. After all, there are documents that likely need to be signed as you’re offboarding an employee, especially if you work in a highly classified job.
Also, making sure that everyone who needs to know is notified of their last day, including IT, payroll, HR, management staff and potentially subordinates that might need to know who to report to going forward.
So, long before you have to actually go through the offboarding process, these two teams should get together to figure out what that process is going to entail.
2. Talk it Out
You want to make sure that anyone who leaves isn’t taking important information with them that the company needs. That doesn’t mean making sure they’re not taking classified information out (or at least, that’s not all it means). It means making sure that managers are getting more information about workflows or procedures that the employee may have developed themselves that make their job easier or more efficient.
Talking with the employee about all of these things, including getting access to any documentation, company email accounts, etc., will help make the transition easier. Also, making sure that you know what projects or processes they might be in the middle of, who they’re in communication with, what needs to be done next for any of their tasks, and how to prepare the next person to pick up right where they’re leaving off is crucial.
3. Collect Everything You Need
If the employee has physical items that belong to the company it’s important that these are all checked in as well. This could include physical files and documents, laptops or tablets, or any number of other items. Things like cameras or tools could be in their possession depending on the type of work that’s being done.
Make sure all of these items are accounted for and that the employee signs off on their return. This ensures everything is prepared for the next person who needs those items. It also makes it easier for the company and the employee to verify that there is nothing still outstanding.
4. Share the News
Let the employee share the news about their upcoming departure on their own. They can make a general announcement in the breakroom or at a meeting, send out a company-wide email, or whatever makes them most comfortable about the news.
By sharing it with the rest of the team you help the entire company feel like just that, a team. They’re going to feel like you care about them because you shared this information rather than just leaving them to find out on their own. Also, the employee will likely appreciate the opportunity to say what they want to say and how they want to say it.
5. Run an Interview
What’s next? You need to have an exit interview where you actually sit down and talk to the employee. This is where you’re going to find out any other information that they want to share about the company, the people who work there, and themselves.
Ask questions that are designed to get as much information as you can. This is a time when employees are most likely to be open and honest because they’re not with the company anymore.
- What did you like about working with the company?
- What did you dislike about working with the company?
- How was the communication between different levels of management and the employees within the company?
- Did you feel that you were supported and heard when you voiced concerns or comments?
- Did you feel comfortable voicing concerns to your management team?
- Why did you choose to look for new opportunities outside of the company?
- How could we have supported you better within the company?
- Were their opportunities that you were looking for but could not get within the company?
- What do you think could be improved to make this a more positive environment for current and future employees?
You don’t have to ask all of these questions, but you could. Or you could come up with even more.
The important thing is making sure that this interview is about getting information on the company and the people in it from the point of view of your employee who is leaving. Be sure to ask follow-up questions where possible to get as much information that you can continue to use in the future.
The more of these exit interviews you do, the more information you’re going to learn and the better your company will be for the people who are still working for you.
6. Create a Checklist
When it comes to all of these pieces of the puzzle, the easiest way to make sure you’re following through with everything that you’ve planned is to create an employee offloading checklist. This checklist will help you not only create a process, but make sure that it’s streamlined and you follow through with it every time.
An employee offloading checklist also makes sure that any manager, from any department in your company, can carry out the process at any time. It means all of your employees get the same experience when they decide to leave, and that consistency can help everyone.
After the Offboarding Process
The offboarding process is meant to help the employee who is leaving and ensure that the company is getting as much information from them as possible. But what are you going to do once they’re gone?
You need to have a plan in place for how you’re going to replace that employee. And you should have an idea of what your plan is going to be before they even leave.
Some employees will give a lot of notice, and you may be able to not only hire someone to replace them immediately but also have an overlap period where they can train their replacement.
Other employees might not give as much time or finding a replacement may take longer on average (such as for specialized positions). In that case, you need to know what you’re going to do about their tasks until you find a replacement and what you’re going to do to go through the process of hiring someone new.
These things should be part of your offboarding process. While they’re not part of the process that the employee themselves will be involved with (unless they’re helping with creating training documents or training their replacement) they are an important piece of the puzzle.
Make sure you have a plan in place for how to transition the tasks that employee is doing to other members of the team temporarily (or how to absorb those permanently if you’re not looking to hire a replacement) and how to hire someone new.
Wrapping Up the Employee Offboarding Plan
Okay, so now you have a general idea of what you need to do. You know that you need an employee offboarding process. And you know the general aspects of what it should include. So, let’s take a closer look at just why this is so important:
- You can improve the experience of all of your employees, including new hires and existing employees by knowing what people like and don’t like about working at your company.
- You can show your employees, even those who are leaving, that you value them and their input.
- You may encourage employees who are leaving to come back at some point in the future.
- Make sure you get everything you need back from employees including physical materials.
- Make sure you remove any permissions/files/information necessary when employees leave.
- Get information about your company and other employees (especially management personnel) that you can’t get any other way.
Are You Ready?
So, are you ready to get started?
If one of your employees was to tell you they were leaving today, what would happen?
Chances are you’ll need a little bit of time to get things organized and create a plan that works.
And don’t be afraid to revamp your plan as you go. You may create a plan that you think is going to be great but then as you start using that process with employees who are leaving you realize it’s not quite as good as you thought.
So make changes.
The best thing you can do is have a plan in place to get started and then be open to changing it or improving it as you go along.
Hopefully, by now you know the importance of employee offboarding. And hopefully you’re ready to start implementing your own employee offboarding process within your company.
You can’t go wrong by helping your employees feel like they are important to you, whether it’s at the beginning of their employment with you or the end (or anywhere in between).