How to Conduct Employee Offboarding So It is a Positive Experience – Part One

New hires are an important component of an organization’s success. When a new hire arrives the goal of each company needs to make sure of is that it does all it can to make certain the onboarding and training the new employee receives is excellent. What is the reason for this commitment to onboarding excellence? When a employee is hired it is critical that their experiences with the company when they begin working are top-notch because the entire goal of hiring talented new staff is to train them, retain them and keep them for the long term to build a solid foundation for ongoing success today and into the future.   

Offboarding, which is one of the harder parts of being an employer, is equally important to all organizations. When it comes to offboarding, companies should put the same emphasis in this process as it does when it hires someone new. Most companies do not have a quality set structured offboarding system set up for releasing and employee or when one quits. On the whole, less than 30% of companies have a structured offboarding system they use with an employee leaving the organization.

It is a fact that at some point each person that is brought onboard will leave your company. It is just good business and logical to focus on this component of an employees’ time with the company as an opening to better your company and its staff in the process for the long term. Feature below are several structured offboarding strategies to follow that you can employ to take advantage of this phase of the employee work cycle with your company.  

The Reason Why A Structured Offboarding System is Needed by Companies

Once an employee leaves your company, through attrition, firing or voluntarily, it is critical that a structured offboarding system is ready to serve them while they are on their way out. The bottom line about offboarding is that is an important transaction with a goal of smoothly moving employees out of the company. No matter what the reason is for the departure, offboarding needs to be a friendly high-quality understanding type transition for the employee, the human resources department and the company.   

For the Human Resources department, it is critical to comprehend the positive impact a quality offboarding process can deliver to your company. A structured offboarding system that offers a friendly quality repeatable transition for the departing employee and the company they are leaving will give strength, safety. and good will to your company’s brand.  Chances are if your company provides a scattered negative offboarding experience they will say negative things. It is almost inevitable. By the same token, when a ex-employee has a positive friendly offboarding transition away from your company, chances are they will speak well about your company, providing a potential positive brand enhancement, which is far better than the alternative.

Developing a structured offboarding system provides Human Resource Directors the direct experience and feedback on what is needed at the company to enhance employee positive job experiences and in turn improve employee retention. This will also allow the company to build a better understanding and working knowledge on several employment components that may require additional observation and assessment for improvement regarding coaching employees, company onboarding, regular training, workplace performance assessment and follow up training.

Be sure to notify everyone that needs to be notified that an employee is leaving including their direct department, their team, the payroll department, the IT department, and vendors the employee manages. Taking these steps will ensure a smooth transition.