All Offboard! Use These Employee Offboarding Tips to Bid an Outgoing Employee a Friendly Farewell in 2023

You know all about the importance of effective employee onboarding (and no worries if you don’t — we’ve got you). It’s paramount to a successful hiring process, it supports employee retention, and when done right, makes sure your new hires feel comfortable and excited to join the flock.

While lots of companies go all-in to ensure that their onboarding programs are top-notch, the same can’t always be said for the employee offboarding process. Yes, it’s a thing, and yes, it matters. In fact, it matters a lot—it speaks volumes about your company and how you care for your team members from start to finish.

Offboarding is a process to help exiting employees seamlessly transition away from the company. A nice goodbye party is always appreciated —but don’t mistake offboarding for an informal farewell with pizza and soda and friendly parting words. All good things, of course, but there’s nothing that can replace a legitimate offboarding experience.

This process gives you a chance to establish a graceful parting between employer and employee, and will vary company to company. At a bare minimum, you can expect to have a candid one-on-one interview with the outgoing employee, giving them the opportunity to comfortably share their honest feedback about their time with the company.

Offboarding has a direct impact on your organization's culture, reputation, and it can also help you improve business practices - and who doesn't want that?

At the root of it, offboarding is simply a nice way of ensuring that the employee’s departure is a friendly experience for all involved. It’s important because it can reduce the risk of ruffled feathers—we like fluffy, happy feathers here!

A proper offboarding experience is important for documentation

Occasionally, a parting of the ways can result in legal action if the employee feels they were wrongfully terminated. With a solid offboarding strategy, you begin a paper trail that follows every step of the departure to the proverbial letter. There’s a termination letter if the person was let go, or a letter of resignation from the employee.

Other important documentation may also be applicable, like a non-compete clause or nondisclosure agreement, as well as details of any benefits that the employee may be privy to after they leave their post.

The termination letter serves as a protective device in the event that the employee attempts to claim they weren’t aware of the reasons for their disengagement from the company. Plus, with information about health coverage or other potential benefits on file, the transition process can be a lot smoother for the employee if they’re going to another company.

End the employee experience on a candid note with an Exit Interview

And you can't forget the crucial exit interview. Just like successful onboarding supports a more productive organization and contributes to a positive company culture, offboarding benefits your business by giving you deeper insight into areas that may need a little polish.

That can lead to a more consistent experience for every employee throughout all departments from the start of their employment to its culmination. When you take the time to put together a truly well-planned offboarding strategy, you’re delivering the message that you value your employees for everything they’ve done—and that you welcome their feedback so that you can use it to establish an even better and stronger workplace.

Offboarding isn’t every People Manager or HR Director's favorite thing because it means putting extra time and energy into employees that are literally leaving. Why do that when you’ve got new hires and current employee engagement to think about?

Because it matters, and because at some point, almost everyone will leave a company. It’s up to you to make that a smooth process that is comfortable and amiable—and that protects your business while ensuring there are no loose ends on the employee’s side, either.

Make sure you’re offboarding the right way by following this basic employee offboarding checklist.

• Begin right away: As soon as you receive an employee’s notice or you terminate an employee, complete the paperwork. Review and sign everything, coordinating with HR as necessary to ensure that items like severance, non-disclosure, non-compete, and benefits agreements are prepared. You can use Goosechase to create an employee offboarding checklist for you and the exiting employee, checking off each piece of documentation as it’s signed and completed to ensure nothing is missed.
• Retrieve all company property - physical and digital: Another key part of offboarding is ensuring a thorough separation between employer and company. That means they’ll need to return all of their physical assets, like their company laptop and phone, while any non-physical assets, like their email address, will be discontinued. You’ll also need to revoke their access when the time is right to things such as social media platforms and ensure they’ve returned keys to your office property.

• Begin information transfer: When a new employee swoops in to fill the exiting employee’s shoes, that’s a major transition for everyone. The exiting employee may need to spend the last couple of weeks on the job on the knowledge transfer process and show the newest team member the ropes. The exiting employee can make use of Goosechase to share important details about the role, giving the newbie specific tasks to complete each day to help onboard them.

Think about it...onboarding and offboarding are two sides of the same coin!

• Conduct the exit interview: Be thorough and ask detailed questions.

Did they feel that the job lived up to their expectations?

What did they like about the job, and what did they feel could be different?

How did they feel about the culture, including their relationships with employees and management?

Was there anything specifically fun they loved about the job?

Did the onboarding process help them when they started?

The feedback can help you reshape and revisit areas of your business that might need attention. Huge point to remember here: Be ready to hear stuff you may not love – but that’s important nonetheless! Honesty is the goal, after all, and you want your team to feel comfortable sharing feedback. Approach the conversation with an open mind, let the employee have their say, and take their comments seriously. A single interview could be the game-changer you didn’t realize your company needed.

There’s no denying the value of employee offboarding. It’s just as important as the onboarding process, and it speaks volumes about how you treat your team members (past, present, and future) —and about your company culture at large. When you take the time to prioritize the employee experience from day one until the end, you deliver a positive message and set the tone for a happy and productive workplace.

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