Is an offboarding process really necessary?

What is offboarding?

When recruiting an employee, there are three major steps during their time in the company:

• Their arrival in the company, which generally triggers an onboarding process,
• Their evolution within the company (change of position, manager, responsibility, etc.),
• Their departure, at which time another process is put in place, namely offboarding.

Regardless of the reason for departure, whether it comes from the employee or the employer, it is important not to neglect this departure, both for the employer brand image and for security reasons.

Why is an offboarding process important?

Onboarding well managed, offboarding on the side.

Everyone thinks about improving the onboarding process for a new employee in a company. HR wants them to feel welcome, and the manager wants them to be operational quickly. The onboarding process is therefore often carefully considered and implemented through concrete actions.

On the other hand, when an employee leaves the company, HR generally focuses on the administrative part (final pay, etc.), the manager is focused on replacing the person who is leaving, and the offboarding process is somewhat neglected.

However, it is essential to support an employee who leaves the company, whether due to dismissal or voluntary departure.

Not sexy, no interest in spending time with an employee who is about to leave, HR and sometimes managers neglect this departure.
Everyone might say, yes but, there are no major issues in the departure of an employee, it's not like in his arrival, we expect nothing from him!

The challenges of offboarding

An employee's departure must be taken very seriously for 3 reasons:

• the employee will likely stay in the same field and will spread an image of the company they left to their new colleagues, clients, their network...
• Social networks and other review sites are the first places an employee will think of if they are not satisfied with their former company and their departure did not go smoothly. This could trigger the 'little extra' that will make the employee take action for a bad review.
• It is increasingly common for an employee to return to work in their former company. They return with more skills and knowledge of the company, which makes them a significant asset. It is therefore crucial to leave a good impression on your departing employee.

The offboarding process, what to do?

Here are some important elements to consider when offboarding one of your employees:

Human side

• Announce the departure to the team: we know the power of rumors! It is therefore very important that the management team is not the last to know 😉 It's also time to organize a farewell party.

• Transfer knowledge: it is important to pass on knowledge to the team and/or the new employee. This is the moment when the employee gives their procedures, their current missions, etc.

• Organize a final interview: this is the time to take stock of the journey through the company. It is also a time when the employee feels the most free to speak, and you will be able to obtain more sincere information about the positive and negative points that he or she has experienced in the company. This is really a time to get quality feedback (if of course we are mature enough to receive it and not get upset!).

• Staying in touch: don't close doors, whether in this company or even for future collaboration elsewhere. Who has never had to meet a former colleague in a completely different context? We don't know the future, so we pay attention to good relationships 😉. If the relationships are good, it would be interesting to offer a meal a few months after the employee leaves to catch up. Don't forget LinkedIn either, which is the network for keeping in touch with someone professionally.

• Manage the administrative tasks: This is the basics in a departure, yet it is still necessary to request administrative documents. Be aware that the law is strict regarding departures.

85% of respondents would be willing to speak positively about the company if their departure went well.

Hays Study 12/2019

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Technical side

• Closing or suspending accounts: It is important to revoke network, software, and physical access to the company so that the user who is no longer part of the company is removed from the workforce and the IT perimeter. In many companies (including large groups), numerous employees who left months ago still have open access, which can create significant security problems. Furthermore, properly deactivating the accounts of a departed user can generate significant savings by reassigning licenses to new users.
• Transfer user rights: pay particular attention to employees with administrator rights on powerful tools. A salesperson, for example, who still has access to the company's CRM (Salesforce, CRM Dynamics, etc.) has all the information to solicit their former client on behalf of their new employer.
• Request the return of equipment: Your employee will inevitably have had badges, access keys, and perhaps IT equipment. For obvious reasons of security and cost, it is essential to note the loans beforehand and request their return on the day of departure.

Is it possible to automate offboarding?

No one expects you to have an elephant's memory! Fortunately, human and IT resources can be combined in these processes.
There are many offboarding solutions available. You can find solutions that only manage offboarding, solutions that manage both onboarding and offboarding, or more security-oriented solutions.

We offer a solution that will help you with offboarding but also with the security of your IS in general.

You can thus create checklists for the 'human' side of things that you can use within HR and send to the managers concerned.

For the 'technical' part, you only need to automate your actions using workflows. By connecting your HRIS and your Active Directory or similar to your solution, you can automatically:

• Deactivate/suspend accounts: When an employee leaves, you can suspend their software resources.
• Notify departures: managers, HR and IT departments receive a notification before the employee's departure in order to best prepare for their departure.
• Monitor your stock: as you have gradually filled in everything you lent to the employee, it is very easy on the day of their departure to know all the resources they have and ask them to return them. This will allow you to manage your stock of equipment correctly and avoid multiple Excel files!