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Offboarding - process for successful exit management
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Offboarding: the basics
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Offboarding checklist

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Offboarding - How to make exit management a success

New employees come and go. But while onboarding now receives the attention it deserves at most companies, the offboarding of departing employees often continues to lead a shadowy existence. Yet professional exit management is no less important than successful induction. In our guide, you can read about what is important for successful offboarding.

All about offboarding

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Offboarding: concept & plan

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Offboarding discussion

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Technical offboarding

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Offboarding checklist

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What does offboarding mean - a definition of the term

Whenever employees leave the company - voluntarily or involuntarily - appropriate offboarding must take place. Offboarding (or exit management) refers to the structured and professional process of supporting employees during the departure phase.

The offboarding pursues the following goals:

  • To create a positive atmosphere between the company and departing employees for the time leading up to their last day of work
  • To ensure a smooth exit, both technically, administratively and emotionally

Why is offboarding important?

The majority of companies still attach little or no importance to offboarding. However, a well-organized offboarding process not only ensures a smooth departure for the employees concerned, but also offers many advantages for the company in particular.

Appreciation

With a sensibly designed offboarding process, you show your appreciation for your employees and the work they have done so far. As a rule, this increases the employee's motivation to complete the tasks with full commitment in the remaining weeks or months.

Onboarding of successors

The tasks also include the comprehensive documentation of their own work and the preparation of a clean handover. Motivated colleagues are more likely to prepare these in detail and thus create an important basis for the subsequent onboarding of the new employee.

A detailed offboarding plan also ensures that no information that could be important later is forgotten.

Employer Branding

Employees who leave the organization are important brand ambassadors. If you show yourself to be a reputable employer through a well-organized offboarding process, employees will leave the company with a good feeling. Damage to your image, for example due to bad reviews on employer portals, can be avoided. In the best-case scenario, the professional appearance even leads to positive reviews, which means that offboarding has a positive impact on employer branding.

Cost saving

A structured exit management can help to save costs in various ways.

By using the offboarding process to ensure that all technology issued, furniture provided for the home office and all other materials are returned, expensive new purchases can be avoided and write-offs prevented.

In addition, structured offboarding and the targeted completion of tasks ensure a more efficient exit management process, which saves time and therefore costs.

Optimization of business processes

Last but not least, employees who leave the company are valuable sources of feedback. Especially when employees leave on their own initiative, they often have valuable feedback on what the company should work on to reduce staff turnover in the future.

What needs to be considered when offboarding?

The reasons why employees leave the company can be of various kinds, such as:

  • Openly communicated termination by the employee
  • Dismissal due to the company's financial situation
  • Termination due to negative circumstances
  • Start of retirement

The position of the employee in the company can also make a difference to the offboarding process. If a senior management position leaves, this has more far-reaching consequences for the company than, for example, the departure of interns.

All these factors should be taken into account when developing the offboarding concept and the respective offboarding process should be adapted accordingly.

Digitalization of offboarding for process optimization

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As with onboarding, there are also numerous tasks involved in offboarding that recur with every separation. Administrative tasks in particular often tie up a lot of time and lead to unnecessarily high costs for the company.

Digitalization, especially for technical offboarding, offers a way to automate and make the offboarding process transparent, thus significantly optimizing it.

Digital solutions help to simplify, make transparent, and automate tasks, leading to significant acceleration. Examples include:

  • Filing and archiving important documents
  • Coordination of all persons involved in offboarding
  • Return process for company devices

Offboarding & data protection

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Special attention should be paid to the topic of data protection during offboarding. Because when an employee leaves the company, there is a risk that:

  • personal data
  • Know-how of the company
  • Trade secrets
are lost or get into the hands of unauthorized persons.
Especially when employees resign unexpectedly or have been dismissed without notice and therefore leave the company at short notice, important things can get lost in the rush. Data protection should then be given all the more attention.

A structured offboarding process helps to minimise or completely avoid the risk of data protection breaches. However, the foundations for this should already be laid during onboarding.

The following measures can be taken for this:

  • Completely and comprehensibly record when which devices and materials were handed over to the employees
  • Document which access rights each employee has received over time in order to fully revoke them later.
  • Use Mobile Device Management solutions for device management. This allows access or entire devices to be blocked remotely with just a few clicks.
  • Use LendisOS to equip your employees. With LendisOS, you can always keep track of which devices and equipment have been provided to which employees, ensuring that they are fully returned.

Offboarding discussion

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An essential part of a structured offboarding process should be an offboarding discussion (or exit interview) before the final departure. Depending on the reason for the separation, the exit interview is conducted by the line manager or the HR department.

The offboarding interview is not only so important because it offers the opportunity to say goodbye to the colleague respectfully and with personal words. Rather, it can provide helpful input on the reasons that led to the decision not to continue working for the company.

A guideline for discussions created as part of the offboarding concept ensures that the interview is focused. The guideline contains all the relevant points that should be discussed. This includes topics on which the company would like feedback from the employee, such as:

  • Corporate culture
  • Working conditions
  • Leadership style
  • Development and training opportunities
  • Processes within the company
  • Salary
  • Other points of criticism
If interested, the employee should also have the opportunity to receive feedback on their work and their importance to the company.
To round off the positive offboarding experience, the interview should end with thanks for everything you have done and an offer to stay in touch.

Offboarding checklist

Offboarding is a process that can be largely standardized. In order to complete all tasks in a structured manner and not forget anything, it is recommended to use an offboarding checklist.

The offboarding checklist should include all tasks related to exit management, as well as the responsible stakeholders (department/colleague). This ensures that everyone involved in offboarding is always aware of which tasks have already been completed and which are still outstanding.
The following list contains the basic tasks that arise during offboarding. Use the list and add the tasks that arise in your company and bring more structure to your offboarding.

Tasks for the line managers

  • Communicate the employee's departure within the team / company
  • Start technical offboarding
  • Ensure documentation and handovers
  • Creating the job reference
  • Organize a farewell
  • Check the need for replacement
  • (If applicable) Conduct offboarding interview

HR

  • Preparing and sending the confirmation of termination
  • Determine last working day based on vacation/overtime hours
  • Calculate outstanding financial claims
  • Start hiring for the open position