Employee Offboarding Process: Checklist and Tips

Much has been written about employee onboarding, yet employee offboarding is an equally important topic for effective human resource management.

Employee turnover is inevitable – studies show that 50% of employees voluntarily leave in the first two years of employment. Whether the employee is leaving voluntarily or is terminated, it's important to make sure this transition happens smoothly.

Let's dive deeper into what employee offboarding is and how you can make it go smoothly.

What is employee offboarding?

Employee offboarding is the process during which an organization parts ways with an employee following their resignation, retirement, or termination. The offboarding process of an employee usually involves:

• Exit interviews

• Return of company property

• Transfer of knowledge and/or training of their replacement

• Various legal and IT procedures

Here's an example of what an employee offboarding checklist looks like in Nuclino, a unified workspace where teams can bring all their knowledge, docs, and projects together:

Why every company needs an offboarding process

Offboarding an employee may seem like a trivial task, but that's rarely the case. Without a clear offboaring process in place, it’s easy for important steps to fall through the cracks, resulting in security risks, lawsuits, and damage to the brand reputation.

And when problems occur, they can be costly – for example, during the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the University of Wisconsin System mistakenly paid $8 million in health insurance premiums and pension contributions for more than 900 employees who had already left their jobs.

A clearly structured offboarding process helps companies:

• Prevent productivity and knowledge loss. When employees leave, they take their knowledge and expertise with them. As a result, the new employee that replaces them may take months to get up to speed and reach full productivity. The offboarding process can ensure that the departing employee documents their knowledge or trains their replacement before leaving.

• Turn former employees into ambassadors. Last impressions are as important as the first. When you part on professional, friendly terms, your former employee may turn into your unofficial ambassador, recommending your company and products to potential future employees and customers.

• Improve employee retention. The offboarding process can generate actionable insights into why good employees leave. This information can be immensely helpful for improving the retention of existing employees.

• Mitigate security risks. Studies show that at least one-third of ex-employees can still access company data, and 20% of organizations say they have experienced data breaches by former workers. Making sure people don’t have access to company systems and networks after they leave is critical yet often overlooked. Fortunately, there are solutions available in the identity access management software market that can help companies address these security concerns.

• Avoid legal issues. Even if you part with an employee on good terms, make sure to protect your organization from contract disputes and wrongful termination lawsuits. Creating the necessary legal paper train is an important part of the offboarding process.

Employee offboarding checklist

When it comes to offboarding employees, the most powerful tool at your disposal is a simple one – a checklist.

Here's an example of what an employee offboarding checklist could look like:

The offboarding checklist details all of the necessary tasks that need to be completed when an employee leaves the company. The checklist format allows team managers and the HR team to see at a glance which activities have been finished and which are still outstanding.

An employee offboarding checklist can take many forms, but it usually covers the following topics.

Knowledge transfer

When employees leave, they take their skills and know-how with them. Start the knowledge transfer process early – ideally, as soon as an employee gives their notice. Ask them to document as much information as they can about their responsibilities: their tools and workflows, important contacts, the status of unfinished tasks, and so on.

The ideal place for this information is a knowledge management system, such as your internal wiki or knowledge base. If your company doesn't have a corporate wiki yet, you can easily create one in Nuclino.

IT permissions and access

Work with the IT department to make sure the employee's accounts are closed at the right time. Many companies end up revoking their employee's access too early, adding chaos to the employee's last days on the job, or forget to revoke it altogether.

Paperwork

Next is that necessary evil known as paperwork. It may be tedious, but having an audit trail protects both the employee and the employer in the event of legal issues.

The exact list of documents you need to prepare usually depends on the type of business you are running, as well as the local legal requirements. It usually includes a letter of resignation, non-disclosure and non-compete agreements, and documents related to various benefits.

Asset recovery

Ensure that the departing employee returns any company property that may be in their possession before their leave date. This is a fairly straightforward (yet often neglected) task. Make sure the employee is aware of what they have to return (e.g. company laptop) and what they may keep (e.g. branded stationery).

Exit interview

Exit interviews have the potential to provide incredibly valuable insights into an organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Here are some questions you should ask employees in an exit interview:

• What did you like most and least about your job?

• Did you have all the resources necessary to do your job?

• How was your relationship with your manager?

• What is the biggest thing we need to do to improve?

• Would you recommend this company or this position to a friend?

Some organizations tend to neglect the offboarding process and focus on what they see as more value-adding activities relating to current employees.

But it's important to remember that employee offboarding is about far more than paperwork. A comprehensive offboarding process can safeguard you against security risks and lawsuits, while giving the departing employee a pleasant exit experience and a lasting positive impression on your company.

Nuclino: Your team's collective brain

Nuclino brings all your team's knowledge, docs, and projects together in one place. It's a modern, simple, and blazingly fast way to collaborate, without the chaos of files and folders, context switching, or silos.

• Create a central knowledge base and give your team a single source of truth.

• Collaborate in real time or asynchronously and spend less time in meetings.

• Manage and document your projects in one place without losing context.

• Organize, sort, and filter all kinds of data with ease.

• Integrate the tools you love, like Slack, Google Drive, Figma, Lucidchart, and more.

Try it now