If you’ve been paying attention to the news recently, you may have noticed that some companies are doing employee offboarding wrong. They’re terminating employees who are working on major projects or who are out on assignment in other states, leaving them to fend for themselves after all their company access and credit cards are revoked. If this is something your company wants to avoid, along with the bad press it creates, it’s important to have an offboarding plan and communicate that plan to everyone involved before the employee leaves your business. Thankfully, ASAP payroll can help you with this task via their tips and HCM software solution.
Communicate with the Employee
Open and honest communication is key to properly offboarding employees. Whether the employee is leaving voluntarily or involuntarily, you should always schedule a meeting to talk about the departure. If the employee is leaving voluntarily, you need to find out why and potentially what you could have done better. This will help you retain future employees. If the employee is leaving involuntarily, you need to tell them why. Perhaps their performance was not what you expected, or perhaps the company is in the process of downsizing. Whatever the reason, your employee has the right to know. Just remember to be empathetic and understanding while answering any questions your employee might have and relaying any pertinent information, like when they’ll receive their last check and if they’re eligible for any benefits.
Create an Offboarding Plan
In order to make the process of offboarding employees as smooth as possible and to ensure nothing is forgotten, it’s best to have a plan and to make sure that plan is known by HR, the management staff, IT and anyone else that has a role to play when employees are offboarded.
Identify Key Tasks That Must Be Performed
First, identify all the tasks that need to be performed in order to successfully and safely offboard the employee. This could include collecting any company property the employee has, revoking access to the company offices and computer systems, filling out required paperwork and conducting an exit interview.
Determine an Offboarding Timeline
Determine an offboarding timeline that includes the employee’s last day, the time that’s needed to complete all the required paperwork, preparing the final check and any other outstanding tasks.
Assign Offboarding Responsibilities
If you have the right software, like ASAP Payroll’s HCM software, you can assign the offboarding tasks to specific employees and create workflows to ensure everything is completed on time.
Inform Everyone Involved
Make sure all the relevant people are informed about the employee’s impending departure. This could include HR, IT personnel, managers and even the employee’s coworkers so that they know that the employee will no longer be available.
Ensure All Requirements Are Met
Ensure all regulatory and legal requirements are met. This could include ensuring the employee knows how to access and sign up for COBRA, whether or not they are eligible for unemployment benefits and when they can expect their last paycheck.
Conduct Exit Interviews
Your employees are your best asset, and they are still an asset all the way through to the exit interview. This is because you can gain valuable feedback about your organization. An employee who is leaving is under no obligation to cage their thoughts, which means you could get very honest feedback about your company culture, the work environment and workloads as well as your management staff. During the exit interview, remember to be empathetic and understand and ask open-ended questions so that you can receive your departing employee’s full response. Actively listen to the answers and make notes so that you remember any important points that the employee brought up during the discussion.
Remind the employee that you want their honest answers and that their responses and the discussion will be used to constructively evaluate the issues the employee is bringing to your attention. As the exit interview concludes, thank the employee for their time and their valuable feedback. This can help your employee feel better about leaving and help your company retain a positive image.
Ensure Legal Compliance
As you get ready to offboard an employee, make sure you are ensuring legal compliance. In order to do this, you may need to have a discussion with your HR department and legal team. This is primarily to ensure that the employee isn’t leaving due to a protected reason as outlined by the Department of Labor and the EEOC, and that the employee will receive all of their outstanding pay and benefits. If the employee has a contract, you’ll want to make sure all of the provisions of that contract are met. You’ll also want to determine if the employee has any company property and how you’d like that property returned.
Use an HCM Platform for Streamlined Offboarding
If you’re looking for a way to streamline your offboarding process and ensure that you complete each task, you could use employee lifecycle software, like ASAP Payroll’s HCM Platform. HCM stands for Human Capital Management, and it can help you during every step of the employee lifecycle, from hiring and onboarding to offboarding. This software is versatile and allows you to customize workflows and centralize employee data management. This helps keep everything in one place while increasing your productivity and helping you make data-driven decisions. You’ll also be able to manage payroll and benefits and ensure legal compliance with every stage of the employee lifecycle.
While no one likes the offboarding process, it’s important to understand that people and companies change, and their goals will not always align. When this happens, it’s important to offboard employees with compassion and empathy while still adhering to any legal requirements and getting the information you need to help your company thrive in the future. ASAP Payroll can help you successfully and seamlessly offboard employees so that you can maintain a positive relationship with the employee as they leave and keep your company’s good reputation intact while ensuring your workplace morale and culture remain positive.
To learn more about how we can help you manage your employees and benefits throughout the entire employee lifecycle, contact us today at 317-887-2727 or request a quote.
