Offboarding - How to make exit management a success
New employees come and go. But while onboarding now receives the attention it deserves in most companies, the offboarding of departing employees often remains in the shadows. Yet professional exit management is no less important than successful onboarding. In our guidebook article you can read what is important for successful offboarding.
Around offboarding
What does offboarding mean - a definition of the term?
Offboarding pursues the following goals:
- Create a positive atmosphere between the company and outgoing employees for the time until the last working day
- Ensure a smooth exit, both technically-administratively and emotionally
Why is offboarding important?
Appreciation
Onboarding of successors
The tasks also include the comprehensive documentation of one's own work and the preparation of a clean handover. Motivated colleagues are more willing to prepare this in detail and thus create an important basis for the later onboarding of the new employee.
Employer branding
Employees who leave the organisation are important brand ambassadors. If you show yourself to be a reputable employer through orderly offboarding, employees will leave the company with a good feeling. Damage to the image, for example through bad reviews on employer portals, can be avoided in this way. In the best case, the professional appearance even leads to positive evaluations, which means that offboarding contributes positively to employer branding.
Cost saving
By ensuring through the offboarding process that all issued technology, provided furniture for the home office and all other materials are returned, expensive new purchases can be avoided and write-offs prevented.
Optimisation of business processes
What should be considered when offboarding?
The reasons why employees leave the company can be of different nature, for example:
- Openly communicated termination by the employee
- Dismissal due to financial situation of the company
- Termination due to negative circumstances
- Start of the pension
It can also make a difference to the offboarding process what position the employee holds in the company. If a senior management position leaves, this has more far-reaching consequences for the company than is the case with 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.
Digitalisation of offboarding for process optimisation
Digitalisation, especially for technical offboarding, is an opportunity to automate the offboarding process, make it transparent and thus significantly optimise it.
Among other things, digital solutions help to simplify, make transparent and automate tasks and thus speed them up significantly. Examples of this are:
- Filing and archiving important documents
- Coordination of all persons involved in offboarding
- Return process of company equipment
Offboarding & Data Protection
Particular attention should be paid to the issue of data protection in the context of offboarding. Because when an employee leaves the company, there is a risk that:
- personal data
- Know-how of the company
- Trade secrets
A structured offboarding process helps to minimise or completely avoid the risk of data breaches. However, the groundwork for this should already be laid during onboarding.
The following measures can be taken for this:
- Completely and comprehensibly record when which equipment and materials were handed over to the employees.
- Document which access rights the respective employees have received over time in order to be able to revoke them completely later.
- Usemobile device management solutions for device management. Access or entire devices can be blocked remotely with just a few clicks.
- Use the Lendis OS to equip employees. With the Lendis OS, you always keep track of which devices and equipment have been provided to which employees, so that they are returned in full.
Offboarding conversation
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.
An interview guide created as part of the offboarding concept ensures that the interview proceeds in a targeted manner. The guideline contains all relevant points to be discussed. It includes topics on which the company wants 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
Offboarding checklist
Offboarding is a process that can be standardised to a large extent. In order to work through all tasks in a structured manner and not to forget anything, it is advisable to use an offboarding checklist.
Tasks for the line managers
- Communicate the departure of the employee in the team / company
- Start technical offboarding
- Ensure documentation and handovers
- Drawing up the employer's reference
- Organise farewell
- Check need for re-staffing
- Conduct offboarding interview (if applicable)
HR
- Preparation and transmission of the termination confirmation
- Determine last working day using leave/overtime
- Calculate outstanding financial claims
- Start hiring for the vacancies