Step-By-Step Guide to the Employee Offboarding Process

You’ve probably heard a lot about employee onboarding, but a smooth exit is just as important as a great start. The employee offboarding process isn’t just about leaving your outgoing employee feeling good – it also ensures that his or her departure causes minimal disruption. After all, you don’t want to end up running around trying to work out where the keys are, just how Mary did her job, or what happened to Johnny’s company-issued cell phone!

There’s a lot more to parting with a team member than simply saying goodbye. Our step-by-step employee offboarding checklist will help you to craft a comprehensive offboarding process that covers most, if not all, eventualities.

First Steps – Handling the Resignation

As soon as you know your employee is planning to leave, you should spring into action. Here’s what to do.

Prepare Final Documentation

To ensure a smooth departure, set the work that is necessary to compile final documentation in motion. This might include:

Plan and Initiate the Work Handover Process

A new employee will be taking over the duties of the old one. Minimize disruption by being prepared. If you transfer duties to an existing employee, your task will be the easiest. If there is a chance of a new employee starting after the departure of the old one, you will need to plan even more carefully.

Conduct an Exit Interview

The exit interview is very important. You want honest responses from the employee who is leaving, so it is best to allocate the task to a manager who the outgoing employee will trust. Although hearing criticism may be difficult; it is important that there should be no repercussions for the negative feedback given. Instead, exit interview feedback presents an opportunity to improve employee retention in future.

Prepare for the Farewell

Farewells should be positive occasions, and they should certainly not go unmarked. Remember that the farewell also shows employees who are remaining with you that your company cares about its employees – even when they are leaving.

Recover Company Equipment and Assets

Farewells are emotional times, and it’s all too easy to forget to hand over something important. Prepare a checklist and allocate a responsible person or people to recover items like:

You are entitled to require reimbursement for any lost items, so be sure the employee knows in advance what is expected and what the implications are should they fail to return any items.

Store Employee Information and Open Channels for Further Communication

Allies will always be better than enemies, so encourage your outgoing employee to stay in touch. You must also ensure that your records are finalized and filed away for future reference if needed.

Tidy up and Prepare for a Fresh Start

Once your ex-employee has departed, it’s time to ensure you’re ready for a fresh start.

Offboarding is a Team Effort

Unless you’re running a very, very small business, offboarding will be a team effort. Various employees and departments will contribute to the process, and it must be well-coordinated and efficient.

The exact steps you will follow will depend, to a certain extent, on the post that the employee is vacating. However, this basic step-by-step process should cover most eventualities and need only be adapted rather than redesigned when employees leave.

Streamline the Offboarding Process With Tallyfy

Is the offboarding process simple? It should be. After all,  it is a repeatable business process that you can follow every time somebody leaves your company. But nothing is as simple as it looks on paper – especially when it is on paper. Forget to sign a document? There are legal fines for that! Forget to get the employee contact information? There go your chances of ever getting back your company laptop!

That’s exactly where using the right workflow software can make the world of a difference. All you have to do is start the process using the software, and it will make sure that every one of your employees is aware of what steps they have to take to complete the offboarding process.

Streamline your HR processes (offboarding, orientation, etc.) with Tallyfy and ensure that you’ll never miss a critical step again.


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