Definition, Best Practices & How To Let Employees Go Tactfully (2022 Guide) – Forbes Advisor

A successful offboarding process helps your ex-employee and your company deal with what can otherwise be an awkward, stressful, and awkward moment with tact and dignity. Here are our top eight steps to creating a tactful, effective offboarding process:

1. Treat departing employees fairly and kindly

Treat your departing employees with fairness and kindness, regardless of how they depart. Thank the departing employee for the work they did and the time and energy they put into their work and your company.

A civil resignation protects companies from retaliation, legal threats, or data breaches while also potentially maintaining a positive, long-lasting relationship that keeps the former employee as a potential customer, brand ambassador, or industry liaison.

2. Determine the reason for the termination

The process of offboarding an employee likely depends on the nature and reason for the employee leaving. An employee retiring may have a relatively straightforward offboarding process, while an employee moving to another job may gain important insights into your organization. Fired or laid off employees also require a different sequence of steps when it comes to offboarding.

3. Communicate about the departure

While it can be awkward communicating with the rest of your organization about an employee’s departure, the sooner you let the office know, the better. The longer you wait, the more likely your other employees will fill in the details themselves. This can become more uncomfortable or result in voluntary departure being viewed as dismissal.

Avoid gossip or misunderstandings by sharing your employees’ departures and, in the case of retirement, publicly congratulating and thanking the employee for their time and service. Whatever the reason – voluntary or involuntary – it’s better to be honest with the rest of your team about why someone is leaving the company. Admit when management made mistakes and provide steps to correct them.

4. Secure property and revoke access

One of the easier parts of the offboarding process — one that stays the same whether you’re laying off employees voluntarily or involuntarily — is safeguarding company assets, revoking employee system access, and ensuring compliance with all other company protocols.

Be sure to ask the departing employee to hand over any company equipment such as keys, ID cards, credit cards, uniforms, phones, laptops, cars, or documents. While this may seem obvious, it guarantees that an employee will not accidentally or intentionally disclose confidential company information.

Also, make sure you revoke any employee access to your company’s online or offline systems, as well as any alarm or gate codes. This can include email, internal platforms, CRM systems, social media accounts and sales databases. In the event of an amicable breakup, it’s polite to give your employee a warning or grace period to ensure they have time to remove any important personal emails or other information they may need, or to update contacts who may need the employee’s new email.

5. Conduct an exit interview to gain insights and collect data

One of the most important parts of the offboarding process is the exit interview. Much like you interview a potential candidate to see what they can bring to your company, you want to interview a departing employee to see what their experience at the company was like. An exit interview gives you an opportunity to gather insights and data on what your business is doing well and what your business could improve on. Feedback from a departing employee on workload, company culture, management, and other employees can shed light on areas you might not otherwise be able to see.

We recommend that the exit interview be conducted by Human Resources or another “neutral” party if the employee leaves the company because of the way they were treated by a line manager. Also, make sure you take all feedback seriously. Remember that every insight you get from your employee is valuable and important, even if you don’t like it. Some important questions to ask yourself are:

• Did the position meet your expectations? What were those expectations and how did it meet or not meet them?
• How was your relationship with your manager? Your Coworkers?
• What are we not doing that we should be doing?
• Who do you admire here?
• What opportunities for improvement are there?
• What is fun (and what not) about working here?

You may find that other questions or more specific questions are more appropriate for your business or the type of offboarding you are doing. Concrete questions can help you ensure more successful knowledge transfer and grow as an employer.

6. Ensure successful knowledge transfer

Whether you are hiring an immediate successor for the departing employee or restructuring existing positions to accommodate the employee’s workload, you want to retain the departing employee’s knowledge within your organization. The specifics vary wildly by job, but a few key elements to remember are:

• Get a clear idea of ​​the employee’s daily routine
• Ensure you have access to and understand all systems and files used by the employee
• Know who an employee works with and who they report to both inside and outside your organization
• Understand how the employee prioritizes and completes all their tasks
• To find out if any of the systems they use require extensive training before a replacement can use them

If the employee left amicably, you can save a lot of time and money by asking them to create a document or video with the above information and tips they could share with their successor.

7. Protect your business from lost productivity

An employee’s departure—whether sudden or planned—can mean that their many responsibilities and projects are suddenly put on hold. In some cases, other employees may be asked to take responsibility, which can be stressful and stressful for the work environment.

Be transparent and understanding with your employees about how the departure will affect different teams or employees, and be prepared for changes in everyone’s day-to-day work. Pay remaining staff more for additional responsibilities and create and share a plan to manage the additional workload required – recognizing a lack of sustainability in a temporary situation is important to the continued success of an operation. Work with the departing employee to ensure successful knowledge transfer and ensure all loose ends are resolved before the employee leaves to minimize the impact of the departure on productivity.

8. Keep in touch

Keeping in touch may not be desirable for either party, but if the employee is leaving the company amicably, staying in touch is a great way to show kindness and appreciation, even if your employee is leaving the company. This can be as simple as contacting you by phone or email, meeting you for coffee, or even inviting the employee to company events, depending on the relationship. Because employees may work for contractors or customers of your company, an ongoing friendly relationship can benefit everyone.

This can also protect your company from dissatisfied employees who face legal action or retaliation, but it can also help your company by allowing that former employee to give you and your company high praise. The employee’s successor may also need help with a specific task, and a positive relationship with the person who previously held that role can be incredibly beneficial.