Employee Offboarding Checklist: Best Practices for 2024

Employee offboarding is often overshadowed by its counterpart, employee onboarding but it is as strategic as onboarding practices and it deserves equal attention.

It’s imperative to understand what employee offboarding entails and what it does not. Offboarding is not a confrontational or neglectful process and it protects employers from legal pitfalls.

In our article, we aim to provide you with a comprehensive guide to employee offboarding by including an employee offboarding checklist, offboarding best practices and the common offboarding mistakes.

So, without further ado, let’s get started!

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Definition of Employee Offboarding

Employee offboarding is a formal process a company undertakes when an employee leaves the organization, whether due to resignation, termination, retirement, or other reasons.

This process is crucial for both the organization and the departing employee.

Even if your employees are leaving involuntarily, there is quite a bit of employee offboarding to be done.

• Employee offboarding is a process where you separate from a former employee gracefully
• By practicing employee offboarding you can transition from your former employee to the next one more easily.
• Employee offboarding can protect your organization from legal issues such as lawsuits and wrongful pay continuation.
• Implementing employee offboarding helps you strengthen your company culture.

Employee Offboarding Checklist Template PDF

By using the employee offboarding checklist below, you will ensure a well-structured offboarding process. This checklist will help you address key offboarding tasks such as returning company property and deactivating access credentials.

Furthermore, with this thorough employee offboarding checklist, you will be able to cover everything about your employee offboarding process.

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Word Employee Offboarding Checklist Template

After all, sharing is caring, and we're excited to share our employee offboarding checklist with you! From the initial steps to post-exit tasks, this offboarding template covers all the essentials of the employee exit process. While the basics are included, this template is fully customizable to suit your organization’s specific needs. With just a few adjustments, it can also serve as an offboarding checklist for managers!

Feel free to download, edit, and use the template to streamline your offboarding process. We’re confident that by using this offboarding checklist, you’ll be able to handle each step thoughtfully and professionally, creating a positive exit experience. Enjoy the process, and we hope it brings value to your organization!

What are the best practices for employee offboarding?

If not managed tactfully, employee offboarding can be awkward and uncomfortable both for you and your former employees.

Here are our employee offboarding suggestions that you can implement to create a graceful and successful employee offboarding process:

1. Ensure fairness during your employee offboarding

You should make sure that your former employees are being treated with fairness and kindness while they are leaving your organization.

You can thank your former employees for their contributions and the time they invested during their employment.

Ensuring a civil departure will protect your organization from legal issues and data breaches. Moreover, you should maintain a positive relationship with your former employees so they can be brand ambassadors or industry connections.

2. Identify why your employees are leaving

The scope of your employee offboarding will change depending on the reason for your employee’s departure.

For example, if your employee is retiring the offboarding process will be more straightforward. However, you can gain valuable insights from resigning employees who will work elsewhere.

Furthermore, employees who have been let go might require a different approach when it comes to offboarding.

3. Communicate with the office about the departure

You should communicate with the rest of your crew about the departure as soon as possible because if you wait, your team might perceive the reasons for the departure differently and even think of it as firing.

You need to be honest about why your former employee is leaving, whether it’s a voluntary or involuntary departure.

Furthermore, avoid gossip since it is unprofessional and can ruin the entire employee offboarding process.

4. Secure your company assets and revoke access

To ensure compliance with the company protocols and to secure your company assets you need an offboarding process.

Before letting your employee go, you should make sure that the employee turns in your company equipment including keys, badges, uniforms, electronic devices, cars, and documents. With this practice, you will be also able to prevent data leaks.

Moreover, you should revoke your departing employee’s access to your organization’s systems. These systems include email, CRM systems, social media, internal platforms, and sales databases.

During the separation period, you can give your employee some time to remove their information from your systems.

5. Hold an exit interview

Employee offboarding can’t be imagined without an exit interview. With an exit interview, you will be able to collect insight into your company’s strengths and weaknesses. Your former employees can give you feedback on workload, company culture, and management in general.

A few important questions to ask during your exit interviews include:

• How satisfactory was your job? Did it meet your expectations?
• How did you get along with your manager and your coworkers?
• How can we improve ourselves?
• What are our strengths?
• What’s enjoyable about working here?

You can find other questions by reading our article about exit interview questions! And you can always tailor these questions in a way that works better for your organization’s offboarding practices.

Using review software for exit interviews:

It isn’t always a matter of if you’re conducting exit interviews but HOW you’re conducting exit interviews. You need a digitized solution in place to make sure you are getting all the necessary insights from your exit interviews. This is where you can use the best performance review software for Microsoft Teams: Teamflect.

Step 1: Go into Teamflect’s Reviews Module

The performance reviews module inside Teamflect serves as a hub for all the reviews conducted in your organization. This goes for your exit interviews as well.

Once you’re inside, all you have to do is click “New Review”.

Step 2: Select the Exit Interview Review Template

Teamflect users have access to a wide array of customizable performance review templates, including an exit interview template that is all set for you to use. These templates can be fully customized by:

• Changing question types: Open-ended, Multiple Choice, Likert Scale, Rating, etc.
• Integrating goal completion rates.
• Integrating 360-degree feedback data.
• Including an employee development plan.
• Creating a custom evaluation criteria
• Adding the 9-Box Talent Grid.

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Step 3: Complete the review

Once you send out the necessary review template, your employee will receive an adaptive card inside Microsoft Teams chat, as well as an e-mail that leads them directly into the review template. Once they fill it out with their answers, your review will be complete. That’s how easy it is to go through reviews with Teamflect.

Step 4: Reporting & Analytics

Teamflect offers plenty of detailed analytics and reports on all the reviews you conduct in your organization and that includes exit interviews as well. Access and analyze these reports to make educated decisions on how you can boost your employee retention rates.

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Use the best performance review software for Microsoft Teams.

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6. Successfully transfer employee information

You need to keep the departing employee’s information within your organization. The specifics of information transfer will change depending on what kind of job it was, but you need to consider these important elements:

• Have a solid understanding of your departing employee’s daily work routine.
• Have access to the systems and files the employee used.
• Know who your former employee worked with.
• Determine if your new employee has to go through extensive training once you replace the former employee.

7. Minimize its negative impact on productivity

Your employee’s departure can disrupt the workflow of your team and have a negative impact on productivity. Your team members might be assigned to work that the former employee couldn’t finish and this can lead to a significant amount of stress in your workplace.

So, you need to be as transparent and tolerant as possible when it comes to managing the changes of your team’s daily work routines.

Moreover, you need to work with the former employee so you can successfully transfer organizational knowledge to reduce the departure’s potential damage to productivity.

8. Succession Planning is key!

No matter how an employee leaves, they are sure to leave a gaping hole in their stead. You need to be ready to transfer the departing employee’s responsibilities and projects to someone else.

There are plenty of succession planning methodologies you can use in order to name a replacement for the employee leaving. We strongly recommend using the 9-box grid talent analysis for succession planning.

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In A Nutshell

Employee offboarding is a strategic process that is important for maintaining security, preserving institutional knowledge, while ensuring a smooth transition for both departing and remaining team members.

By parting ways gracefully, and treating departing employees fairly you will be able to protect your organization from legal issues.

You can improve your employee offboarding strategy by downloading our free employee offboarding checklist. Implement employee offboarding best practices we provided to ensure fairness and security during your offboarding process.

You can also secure your organization’s future by optimizing your offboarding process through Teamflect. To schedule a free demo, all you have to do is click the button below!

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