8 Tips for Remote Offboarding

This blog is a follow on from my 6 Tips for Remote Onboarding. It would be remiss of me to give you tips for onboarding without giving you tips for offboarding in a remote environment. This is particularly relevant where I am right now in Melbourne, Australia which is experiencing it’s second COVID-19 lockdown.

Once again I’ve had the help of the wonderfully knowledgeable Ms Tanya Williams of Connected HR to put together this list of tips.

Many businesses do not think it’s important to have an offboarding process, but it can have an enormous impact on your brand. How an organisation exits an employee can ultimately make or break your firm in the long term. Companies with a well-designed offboarding process will have a greater chance of fostering brand loyalty among their ex-employees.

Tip 1: Standardise your offboarding process

Like I am always saying, having a standardised process will create efficiencies. It will ensure nothing is missed, from both the employee and employer standpoint, and ensure the offboarding process runs smoothly. No one wants a chaotic exit filled with confusion. I think we can all relate to that at some point in our careers.

Tip 2: Develop a handover plan

It’s very important for both the manager and employee to agree on work expectations in the remaining notice period. That may consist of finishing off certain work or projects, transitioning work to another employee, or training a replacement.

“An employer can’t expect 100% productivity during the notice period, but 50, 60, 70% productivity might be ok” Tanya – Connected HR.

It’s also a good idea to schedule check ins until the last day so the manager can monitor the progress of the transition.

Tip 3: Conduct an exit interview

“I recommend both a face to face (video call) exit interview and a follow up survey” Tanya – Connected HR

As people are often more candid in writing, sending an exit survey to the employee before the exit interview is a good idea. For a 4 week notice period, it should be sent 1 week into the notice period.

The follow up exit interview should be informal and should be done a week after the survey, so in week 3. This is an opportunity for the employee and employer to discuss the responses in the survey in more detail. Make sure you have your videos switched on, it will help with the informality.

If the notice period is shorter than 4 weeks, these activities should be spaced out in days instead of weeks.

“You want both of these activities to be finished well before the employees last day” Tanya – Connected HR

Tip 4: Agree on a communication plan to the team

This relates to the communication of the employee exit to the rest of the team. Ask the employee what they want their exit message to look like, agree on the exit message and timing. It is important to communicate to the team early, as soon as possible so the employers message is the first and only.

“Chinese Whispers is not what you want when offboarding an employee. Transparency is key” Tanya – Connected HR

Tip 5: Make a plan to retrieve assets and revoke system access

In these days of working from home instead of the employee bringing their laptop, keys and office credit card to work on their last day, the employer will be organising a courier to go to their house and pick them up.

“Give the employee enough notice to get the assets ready.” Tanya – Connected HR

Ensure your IT department is aware of the date and time they will need to revoke access to systems including email and ensure this is also communicated to the employee.

Tip 6: Last day is for celebration

“An employee’s last day of work should always be a day of celebration and managers need to understand this” Tanya – Connected HR

Tanya advises to always say thank you for the work they have done at your firm and make sure the exit is as supportive and positive as can be.

Instead of the standard Friday night drinks on the balcony with speeches, organise a team video call to say thank you to the employee and maybe even send them a gift basket or a personalised message from the CEO.

Tip 7: Leave the door open

Keeping the door open applies to both a regrettable and non-regrettable exit to an extent, and generally companies do not do this part well.

Even if you let the employee go and wanted them to leave, it is still really important to part ways in an amicable manner. Even more importantly is to only talk positively to remaining employees about the ex-employee.

“A big tip is for manager to not take it personally. People leave for different reasons. I’ve seen it often that managers turn on exit employees and this isn’t good for your brand” Tanya – Connected HR

Managers need to consider what methods they can use to keep the communication lines open, especially if they hope the ex-employee would one day come back. There are many digital ways of keeping in touch with others professionally such as Linkedin. Consider an alumni program to keep in touch with them and let them know they’ll always have a job with your firm should they want it. Maybe even schedule a coffee video date once they’ve settled into their new position.

Tip 8: Reassess the role

Roles change! Use this time that the role is vacant to look at the role and assess what you could do differently going forward.

“It isn’t as easy to do an analysis when someone is in the role” Tanya – Connected HR

Perhaps the employee had some comments around the role and potential changes in the exit interview or survey? Use that to conduct your preliminary review.  

Remote vs on-site offboarding

If you think about the process for remote offboarding it is much the same as on-site. Probably the biggest difference is the extra effort required from the employer to make the employee feel supported during their last days. It can often be out of sight, out of mind, and that will the main challenge to managers and employers in this current landscape. There is so much room for firms to do this better and it all starts with a standard process.