Offboarding Doesn’t Seem Important…But It Is. Here’s Why

Tens of millions of people quit their jobs every single year. While this might appear as a simple situation for the employer, it isn’t. You can’t just lock them out of your network and disable their ID card after their last day. It would be best if you had an offboarding process to make sure that everything that needs to happen actually happens. Still, you might wonder, why does this matter?

Retaining Organizational Knowledge

When employees leave, they don’t just take their personal effects with them. They also leave with all of their accumulated organizational knowledge. The longer an employee has been there, the worse the loss for the organization. A good offboarding process works to avoid this wholesale loss. Part of any good offboarding process is getting the employee who leaves to train their replacement. This helps pass along at least some of that organizational knowledge.

Maintain Employee Morale

Any departure can send overall employee morale into a dive, but especially if the persona leaving was a high-performer or well-liked. Letting employees find out about the exit through gossip will only make things worse since they can get false information, such as the employee was fired. A formal offboarding process includes reaching an agreement about how to disclose the information to everyone. This lets you and the departing employee exert some control over how the information is received.

Managing the Details

There will be many details you must attend to when an employee leaves. An offboarding process makes sure you tick all those boxes. For example, you must revoke any network access they have to non-public materials. You need to collect any devices, keys, or passcards you issued and remove them from the active employee database. Plus, you must schedule and conduct an exit interview before they leave. A formal process gives these activities structure and coherence.

An offboarding process serves several important functions for your company. It helps ensure that you retain organizational knowledge. You exert some control over how other employees find out, which lets you avoid some damage to employee morale. It also helps you perform all the small tasks that must happen when an employee leaves.

Did you recently wrap up offboarding a valuable employee and need to find a suitable replacement? Contact Gallman Consulting today to find their successor.