Employee Offboarding: Definition, Checklist & Best Practices

As a growing business, we know you keep your brand image at the highest echelon of importance. And why shouldn’t you? Almost half (46%) of American customers said they would pay more to buy from brands they can trust.

And, interestingly along with your website, marketing, PR, CX, and current employees –- your former employees also contribute to how positively people perceive your brand.

This is why ensuring a good employee experience even when they leave is important. And this can be done through a well-planned employee offboarding process.

What is Employee Offboarding?

Employee offboarding is the formal process used while disengaging employees from their roles in an organization. The HR department uses it for all the departing employees who choose to leave a company through termination, layoffs, retirement, resignation, or for any reason whatsoever.

When disengagement happens, the organization is vulnerable to several risks. These may include but are not limited to incomplete projects, disruption in client communication, data safety issues, compliance risks, and more.

An employee offboarding process is broadly designed to reduce vulnerabilities and prevent losses during the separation process.

This HR process generally includes receiving valuable feedback from the staff leaving about their experience in the organization and gaps in the company culture.

Offboarding comes last in the employee lifecycle, which includes phases such as recruitment process, onboarding, development, and retention.

What is the Difference Between Onboarding and Offboarding?

As the name suggests, offboarding and onboarding are antonymous to each other. 

Onboarding term in the corporate sector means hiring new employees – bringing new staff aboard. And offboarding explains the process when an employee is leaving the organization.

Both these processes are critical and require a lot of attention from the HR department.

Let us understand the difference between the two in terms of their processes: 

Why is it important to focus on employee offboarding?

 The simple answer to this is that your departing employees have an impact on your brand image. Let’s get into more detail:

1. You may lose new talent, customers, and even investors

• Through online reviews

Reviews are powerful. 86% of employees and job seekers research company reviews and ratings to decide where to apply for a job.

To make matters worse, since they are no longer associated with you – they might be liberal with their language and more vivid with the experiences they share online.

And unlike customers, reviews from former employees leave a starker impression on people since they are perceived as insiders who know how a business is beyond the façade of branding and PR and even beyond the product. 

People want to associate with conscious brands. Businesses are expected to be vocal on moral issues, be socially responsible, act sustainably and, more importantly, take care of their people.

• Through word-of-mouth recommendations

Similarly, they can stir (negative) word-of-mouth marketing campaigns, and they are equally if not more scathing than online reviews. 

Moreover, word-of-mouth comes first among the top five popular ways to recommend a business, followed by Facebook, Google, and Twitter, as per Semrush. 

Unhappy former employees may speak to potential hires, customers, investors, and even strangers.

And these instances matter more than generally imagined since almost half (48%) of businesses worldwide rely heavily on the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

2. You are losing on opportunities

When an employee leaves their job, they likely have ideas of how to improve their former role, team, and company as a whole.

Once they leave, they could apply for a job with a competitor, become a customer or partner, or, more importantly, return to your company as a boomerang employee.

Did you know that boomerang employees or referrals from alumni make up 15% of all new hires?

Such hires will save you money and time as there would be no employee acquisition cost involved. In addition, these boomerang employees will know the job and will now be a better version of themselves (hopefully).

So, how employees feel while leaving your company plants a life-lasting impression on them. And you, as a former employer, want that impression to be good.

How can a smooth offboarding process improve company culture?

Another benefit of a good offboarding experience is that it impacts your current workforce.

The easiest way to make your existing employees dislike you and the company is by offering an avoidable bitter exit to someone.

If a leaving employee has a subpar experience, they will gossip about it to their colleagues. And these negative sentiments will spread like wildfire – significantly destroying your workforce’s sentiments towards you and the organization.

Employee Offboarding Checklist: How to Offboard an Employee? 

Similar to an onboarding checklist, there is an employee offboarding checklist as well.

An offboarding checklist is essential for a smooth offboarding process. It helps in managing the entire process of employees leaving the organization.

It prevents data breaches and similar risks to the business by managing access to company software and devices after an employee leaves.

The problem of illegitimate confidential information access is more serious than it sounds. 87% of former employees take organizational information with them and the reason could be many:

• A former staff member might forget to hand over data and access provisions as they leave.
• Some might feel entitled to the data they have created for the company and would demand access to it even after leaving.
• Finally, some might use it maliciously to offer it to competitors in exchange for placement or goodwill.

Apart from keeping the company data safe, an offboarding checklist also helps you recover company assets efficiently.

It can also help you know why an employee chose to leave, what you can improve in the organization, and how you can position yourself better as an employee in the market. 

Here are some key things to include in an employee offboarding checklist:

1. Talk about retention

   If we are talking about employee-insisted exit, then the first thing the organization needs to do is try retaining them.

   This is the chance for you to understand what the employee wants: is it a raise or a change in role recognition? You might also get to know what’s urging them to leave, helping you make and promote organizational changes. 

   Then, if it is appropriate, consider incentivizing them to make them stay.

2. Inform the relevant people

   Initially, the message of an employee leaving stays with their manager before finalizing the decision.

   Once that is done, this news shall be updated to all the relevant parties in the organization to mitigate any possibility of rumors or miscommunication.

3. Start the documentation process

   Simply put, loose ends in this step may lead to legal issues in the future. The documentation process requires input from both ends – the exiting employee and the management.

   HR should review all policies and packages associated with the employee, like non-disclosure, benefits, or severance packages.

   If an employee has signed a non-disclosure, non-compete, or confidentiality agreement, go through their post-leaving responsibilities and how they can prevent any breach.

   Also, offer them copies of the contract.

   Other documents may also need to be reviewed pertaining to employee benefits like:

   • 401K and 403B
   • Remaining or additional pay for X amount of months
   • ESPOs
   • Remaining vacation time, sick leaves, or PTO
   • Retirement plan transfer

4. Set up Meetings for Knowledge Transfer

   In case there is a replacement available before the employee leaves, then arrange a meeting for the leaving employee to transfer their skills to the new staff member.

   An efficient knowledge transfer process reduces the time spent in training and reworks. In addition, it helps the new employees efficiently understand what is expected from them.

   Moreover, The HR managers role is very important in this.. They must ensure that the new employees feel comfortable, know the nitty-gritty of their roles, and have access to all the software, tools, and documents needed for the role.

5. Reset Accounts

   During the offboarding process, it is vital to remove access to emails and other company platforms and change passwords. Failure to do so may cause vulnerable situations in terms of data safety.

   Before doing so, ensure that the employee has saved all the necessary work and data at appropriate places, for instance, by saving the company work in a folder that other people can access and have downloaded information relating to ESOPs, tax receipts, payslips, and more.

   Moreover, redirect calls and emails to the new employee or point of contact, update the company org chart in places like MS Outlook and MS Teams, and remove the employee from calendars and meetings.

6. Recover your assets

   Finally, recover all the company assets like laptops, laptop accessories, hard disks, access to software, and more.

   Also, ensure that the employee returns their ID card, access cards, keys, corporate credit cards, travel cards, meal cards, and more. This step shall be taken on or before the employee’s leaving date.

The Employee Offboarding Process: How to Ensure a Smooth Transition?

Though the steps above promise a seamless offboarding experience, it’s not enough.

For instance, you might want to understand why your employees are leaving and whether any internal process has impacted their decision.

Also, if the employee is made to feel special as he or she leaves (which is the goal at the end of the day).

You must go above and beyond the normal employee offboarding process – and follow some employee offboarding best practices.

What Are the Best Practices for Employee Offboarding?

As the name suggests, employee offboarding best practices are tips you can use to go a notch further and deliver a great employee offboarding experience.

Some of the employee offboarding best practices to be aware of are as follows: 

1. Go Beyond the Formality of the Employee Offboarding Process

   The aim is to go above and beyond the formalities of the offboarding procedure and make the departing employee feel valued for their service.

   The employees leaving have spent their valuable time with the organization. They have connections and memories associated with the company, and these sentiments require a farewell.

   Someone from the team can plan a get-together party as the last working day approaches. Though it need not be a compulsory policy, the gesture leaves a lasting positive imprint on the leaving employee.

2. Conduct an Exit Interview

   Exit interviews are important as they give companies valuable insights into their workings, culture, processes, and more.

   More importantly, it helps in understanding the reasons behind higher employee churn. In addition, analyzing the responses gathered in exit interviews can help identify bottlenecks and gaps in the organization, which are opportunities to improve.

   Having said that, an exit interview needs planning so you can collate valuable insights and not drift off gathering unnecessary ones.

   For instance, you can gain information about other organizations’ salary packages, vacation time, and other perks. Knowing if a competitor is poaching your departing employees is also helpful.

    Some questions you can ask in an exit interview are as follows: 

   • Since when did you start looking for a new job?
   • What made you look for a different job?
   • What do you think about the culture of our organization?
   • How do you think we can offer a better employee experience?
   • Were you given enough help and resources to do your job?
   • On a scale of 1 to 5, how demanding was your workload on a particular day?
   • Did any aspects of the workplace impede your ability to work effectively?

   You can check out exit interview templates here.

3. Write them a good recommendation

   Though it is hurtful to lose talent, employees have all the right to make career-forwarding decisions. You want to do everything possible to help them with this venture.

   As a token of goodwill, you can write them a good LinkedIn recommendation. Moreover, you could introduce them to your network if they have not found a new job yet.

4. Open ways to stay connected

   After employees move out, figure out ways to connect with them. This helps maintain the rapport and leverage the opportunity to work again.

   For instance, invite them for lunch or reach out during professional events. This will show that you truly cared about them as an employee and still do as an individual.

Conclusion

Effective offboarding is crucial to maintain a business’s prestige, optimizing the work experience of current employees, and retaining networking opportunities.

Despite this, HR in small businesses focuses only on the onboarding process and performance management, and the optimization of the offboarding process is overlooked.

If small businesses provide a consistent experience to their employees from the beginning to the end, it shows that the company is true to its word. For its current and potential employees, the company’s efforts toward a smooth offboarding process show how it values its employees. 

We hope this blog would have helped you with some actionable insights.