Employees leaving is an inevitable part of running a company. Recent research by Douglas Scott Legal Recruitment1 revealed that, on average, employees change roles around once every four and a half years, with younger workers unsurprisingly the most likely to switch jobs more frequently.
Properly offboarding employees as they move onto the next stage of their career is a key part of your HR processes and needs to be managed in a kind and professional way while making sure all necessary steps have been completed.
When offboarding employees, your HR team should consider:
- Clear communication with the departing employee
- Smooth transfer of knowledge
- Return of company property and confidential data
- Timely completion of necessary legal paperwork
- Revoking access to accounts and systems
- Conducting exit interviews
- Minimising the impact on the wider team
Good offboarding benefits all parties
A positive offboarding process has benefits for you and for your employees.
Your offboarding policy should be concise, clear, and considerate, so it can be as pain-free as possible for all parties.
Good process management ensures the employee understands exactly what is expected of them, smoothing their journey at what can otherwise be a stressful time.
Offboarding staff correctly is also key to protecting your company’s interests. A smooth transition between the departing employee and whoever will be taking on their roles and responsibilities will minimise disruption to your workflow and team morale.
Clear processes will also help your HR team ensure access to confidential data is revoked and company property returned, particularly in an age of remote and hybrid working where employees are more likely to have company property or files at home.
Utilise offboarding to attract top talent in the future
It might seem counterintuitive, but good offboarding can help your company grow. Exit interviews are a golden opportunity to seek candid feedback, helping you to better understand the employee’s experience, and reflect on your culture, practices, and policies – information you can use to improve as an employer.
A positive offboarding experience can also benefit you in the long run. The employee may no longer work for you, but parting on good terms could turn them into a useful contact for the future while boosting your reputation as a good and fair employer.
Equally, a negative experience could affect your reputation within your industry and damage morale among other employees.
Risks and repercussions of poor offboarding
Offboarding employees is not a simple process, with many intricacies to consider. When done poorly, it can negatively impact not only the departing employee, but your company’s reputation and productivity. Poor process management wastes time and resources for your HR team.
Non-standardised processes mean important things are more likely to be missed, affecting productivity and workflow during handover. Plus, it can leave your company open to legal action if the employee doesn’t feel they have been treated fairly.
At Demeter, our process management software provides you with continuous improvement tools to show you where and how your HR processes can be enhanced. By mapping and streamlining your HR processes, you are setting your business up for greater success.
Standardise your HR processes for business growth
Although offboarding is not simple, it doesn’t need to be difficult. The key to success is building repeatable and scalable processes for your growing business.
Demeter’s process management software allows you to track and manage your HR processes in a centralised way, reducing the administrative burden on your HR team. Stress-tested and ready to use, our process templates can be customised to suit your specific business needs.
Your HR team can easily view each task, see how complete it is, and who is responsible for it, to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
We provide you with the tools you need to manage your employee’s departure professionally, while making sure all the necessary processes have been completed.
Watch our short step-by-step video guide.
At Demeter, we make process flow, so your business grows
The movement and changeover of staff is an inevitable part of your company’s growth, and standardising your HR processes will save you time, resources, and stress. Demeter can help maximise the benefits of a smooth and thorough offboarding experience.
There is never a good time to lose an employee, but Demeter can help make sure no balls are dropped in the process and your wider team’s productivity is impacted as little as possible.
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Get in touch today to find out how we can help you improve HR processes.
We make process flow, so your business grows.
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