The Complete Employee Offboarding Checklist

You know that employee onboarding is important. You've heard it from HR, you've heard it from your manager, and you remember reading about it on the internet. But what about employee offboarding? 

You might be wondering what this process is all about and if you should be doing anything to help employees transition out of your company. That’s why we will explore the importance of employee offboarding and share a comprehensive offboarding checklist in this article. 

• What is employee offboarding?

• Why offboarding is as important as onboarding employees

• What are the benefits of offboarding?

• Best practices for offboarding

• Creating an offboarding checklist

Employee offboarding is the process of managing an employee exit. This refers to both cases of employee-initiated leave as well as termination of an employee's employment. It includes tasks such as:

• Closing out all of the employee's tasks and projects

• Ensuring all of the employee's responsibilities are transferred to another employee

• Conducting an exit interview

• Recovering any company assets 

• Making sure they are leaving on good terms

This can be a difficult process for both you and your former employees, so it's important you have a solid plan in place to ensure that this transition is handled seamlessly and respectfully.

We often talk about onboarding new employees and how companies can create a seamless onboarding experience, but ensuring a smooth transition if an employee decides to leave your company is a crucial aspect of human resources and management as well.

Since it's the last step in an employee's tenure with your company, it's critical to make sure everything goes smoothly. Here are a few reasons why:

• To solidify your employer branding 

• To protect the company from legal action

• To prevent the employee from sharing confidential information with competitors 

• To give employees a positive final impression of your company

• To keep doors open for good employees to return - or to refer you as an employer 

• To ensure that the employee leaves on good terms

There are numerous benefits to properly offboarding employees. For one, it helps improve an employer's brand by maintaining a positive reputation among candidates, but it also supports compliance by ensuring that all legal obligations are met and that no documents or information are left behind.

In addition to that, a constructive and thoughtful employee offboarding process can also reduce costs by ensuring relevant information and knowledge doesn’t leave with the exiting employee but is rather kept within the company for the benefit of the replacement hire. This will help reduce onboarding time and increase productivity and efficiency.

Naturally, there are many different approaches you can take to your offboarding process, but there are a few best practices to keep in mind when structuring your offboarding approach - and these are best compiled in a central offboarding checklist.

The employee offboarding checklist should be a document that can be used by HR, managers and employees to make sure all necessary tasks are completed. It should be a living document that is reviewed and updated regularly. It’s important for everyone involved in the process to have access to an up-to-date version of the offboarding checklist so that there are no surprises later down the line when it comes to finalizing employee information or filing paperwork with government agencies.

So as you are preparing your offboarding document, here are some things to keep in mind.

1. Communicate the changes 

Communicate the changes in personnel to the rest of the team. There is nothing worse than rumours making the rounds about if and why an employee is leaving, so make sure you get ahead of the story and take charge of the onboarding process.

This includes clearly communicating the change in your team to everyone and making sure they understand the implications this might have on their work. Additionally, ensuring that your employees have a direct line of communication if they have any questions or concerns about the upcoming changes can also help put everyone at ease.

2. Take care of the administrative tasks

Administration is a big part of managing a team, and this includes offboarding an employee as well. Depending on your company's policies and procedures, you may need to prepare a few forms for departing employees. 

These can include:

• NDAs (non-disclosure agreements)

• Receipts for returning company property, like laptops and cell phones

• Certificates of employment

3. Set up a replacement plan

If you don't have a replacement in place when the employee leaves, create a plan for how your team will handle their responsibilities. This might mean that you'll ask other staff members or contractors to take on tasks temporarily until you find someone new. 

You should also make sure that everyone understands what tasks they're responsible for and when they're needed to be completed by.

4. Organize knowledge transfer

Knowledge transfer is an incredibly important part of offboarding management. If you don’t make sure the knowledge and experience gained by the exiting employee is passed on correctly to the rest of the team, you are risking to lose valuable company information - not to mention the setback in employee efficiency if the new hire has to start from scratch and might run into problems that could have been solved by a proper handover. 

To ensure that the employee transfers their knowledge, you can either prompt them to write a handover document with any information and knowledge required for the position, or organize a training session - best case scenario including the replacement hire. 

5. Conduct an exit interview 

Another essential part of offboarding is to conduct an exit interview. This not only allows you to provide the leaving candidate with feedback about their time spent in your company, but also enables you to receive constructive criticism and reasons for why they are leaving their position.

These insights are extremely valuable to create a better employee experience for the rest of your team, and getting ahead of any other team members potentially leaving for the same reasons.

To prepare for the exit interview, make sure to create a questionnaire for the employee to complete - and ask for feedback on how your organization can improve.

6. Collect company assets and access

One of the last steps in your employee offboarding process is to collect company assets, such as laptops and other hardware. You should also retract any access to internal documents and company software access that was provided to the employee.

7. Say your farewell

And finally, say your goodbye! It is a nice touch to send an employee on their way by organizing a leaving party, or handing over a gift from the team to commemorate the time spent and worked together.

At the very least, make sure to write a nice email or say a few words on their last day. 

Conclusion

With all the benefits and best practices we’ve outlined, it’s clear that employee offboarding is a crucial part of your team’s success. This checklist will help you ensure that employees are prepared for their next step in life as well as setting your company up for success in the aftermath of an employee exit.