How well do you handle employee offboarding? Employee offboarding is the process by which an employee leaves your company, and there are steps you must take in order to ensure a smooth offboarding process and to make sure your company adheres to any legal considerations. To help you properly offboard employees, ASAP Payroll has devised these tips as well as a complete HCM software solution to help you.
Plan Ahead for Employee Offboarding
As a company that wishes to grow and expand, you probably plan for talent acquisition and employee development so that you can retain the employees you hire for the long term. However, there will be times when your company needs to downsize, or employees have to leave the company for various personal reasons. Therefore, you should also take the time to plan for employee departures.
You can do this by identifying key tasks in the offboarding process, assigning those tasks to the responsible parties and creating a timeline for the completion of those tasks. An example of offboarding tasks might be:
- Getting or giving notification of the employee’s impending separation and notifying the relevant departments, including HR, management staff and IT.
- Ensuring record compliance for the outgoing employee, including making sure tax forms, benefits records, evaluations and other documents are properly filled out and stored.
- Getting all the company property returned that may be in the employee’s possession.
- Canceling the employee’s system access and access to the physical building.
- Issuing the employee’s final paycheck.
- Distributing and explaining any benefits they may still receive and how to apply for COBRA
- Conducting an exit interview.
- Completing a knowledge transfer and job handover to a new or existing employee who will be filling the outgoing employee’s role.
Make Sure to Adhere to any Legal Requirements When Offboarding Employees
Prior to offboarding an employee, make sure you are adhering to any legal requirements. This can mean making sure the employee is not leaving due to a discriminating reason or as the result of something that could be construed as an employment violation later. In order to complete this step, you’ll probably want to talk to your human resources department and your legal team. You’ll also want to make sure that the employee’s last paycheck and correct and includes any money owed to them from unused PTO or vacation time.
Be Open, Honest and Transparent When Communicating with Offboarding Employees
When you have an employee who is leaving your company, remember to talk to them in an open, honest and transparent fashion. You’ll want to schedule a meeting that’s convenient for the outgoing employee and discuss the reasons for their departure. If the employee is leaving for their own reasons, make sure you write those down and any pertinent points they make. If the employee is being let go by the employer, let the employee know why. It could be related to their recent performance. It could be due to company downsizing, but whatever the reason, make sure that is clearly communicated to the employee.
Offer Support to Employees Who Are Being Offboarded
When an employee is offboarded, there’s a good chance they will have many responsibilities in their final few days in order to close out their workload and potentially prepare a new employee to take over the role. Offer additional support during the transition time. If the employee is leaving for an involuntary reason, remember to give them the numbers to any career counselors or other resources that may help them find and transition into a new position. This will help the employee feel valued and respected even though they are leaving.
Always Conduct an Exit Interview With Outgoing Employees
Remember to always conduct an official exit interview with all outgoing employees. This gives your employee the chance to provide you with insight as to why they are leaving or how they feel about leaving the company. It also gives you a chance to empathize with the employee and explain any reasons you may have for their departure. Remember to answer any questions the employee has openly and honestly and write down anything the employee says that could help your company identify areas where they need to improve.
Consider Using an HCM Platform to Streamline Employee Offboarding
Managing the steps of employee offboarding can feel overwhelming or rushed. The good news is that there is software available to help you manage the tasks. ASAP Payroll has a Human Capital Management (HCM) Platform that can help you manage all the stages of the employee lifecycle from talent acquisition and training to offboarding. This revolutionary software can help you streamline HR tasks, assign tasks to the relevant personnel and keep your payroll and benefits organized and compliant.
Properly offboarding your departing employees helps you maintain your employer reputation, ensure that private company information stays within the company and in many cases, leave the door open for the employee to return at a later date. After all, according to the Harvard Business Review, an average of 28 percent of all new hires are boomerang employees, or employees who have previously worked for the company. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that your offboarding process is as smooth and seamless as your onboarding and training processes.
To get help properly offboarding your employees and to learn how ASAP Payroll’s HCM software can help you streamline your HR processes, give us a call at 317-887-2727 or request a quote.
