Offboarding in 2024: Checklist and best practices

Onboarding new employees is an important practice that supports your company culture, establishes the smooth transition of job responsibilities and makes employees feel valued. Offboarding has the same impact and is just as critical. 

Offboarding is the process of managing an employee’s exit from your company, whether they have resigned or been terminated. A comprehensive offboarding checklist will help you tie up loose ends and leave employees with a positive impression of the company. 

Read on to learn more about what offboarding is, why it’s important and what best practices you should observe. You can also utilize our offboarding checklist to help you start building your process right away. 

What is offboarding?

Offboarding is the formal process of separating an employee from your company, whether by resignation, termination, retirement or other circumstances. This includes transferring job responsibilities, turning in equipment and keycards and deactivating digital access to company systems. 

The process should ensure that there are no loose ends when an employee leaves the company. Often, teams also use offboarding to survey employees about company culture and what could be improved.

Why is offboarding important?

The offboarding process is extremely important to the security and continued success of your company. 

• Brand impact: Successful offboarding protects your company and brand by ensuring employees depart with a positive experience. Most company culture is focused on current employees, but former employees can impact your brand both by word of mouth and online reviews.
• Institutional knowledge: When an employee leaves, they can take specialized information with them. If your workplace doesn’t have existing redundancies in place to prevent this, offboarding can help transfer important information so that it’s not lost. This ultimately saves time and money and reduces the impact of an employee leaving. Otherwise, cumulative loss of learned, hands-on knowledge can impact operations.
• Security measures: Protect your company from legal, security and compliance risks by collecting all technology and means of access an employee has. This includes company laptops, company cell phones, keycards, physical keys, flash drives and digital access like usernames, passwords and emails. One in four employees have access to an account from a previous job. Prevent data breaches by developing rigorous offboarding. 
• Important feedback: Departing employees can provide hard-to-hear but critical feedback on your company and its processes. Whether it is positive or negative, former employees are more likely to provide genuine feedback. Don’t waste the opportunity to listen to what employees have to say in their exit interview. Keep an eye out for recurring feedback and patterns so you can identify both strengths and weaknesses and invest in places that will support production and employee retention.

Offboarding checklist

Every workplace will have unique needs, but a few core tenants will always be the same when offboarding employees. Always make sure to communicate an employee’s departure, transfer their knowledge and responsibilities and secure any access employees may have, both digital and physical. 

Never ignore a resignation and leave everything in an employee’s hands. If you aren’t sure where to start, we’ve outlined a checklist below. Don’t be afraid to make changes. As you move forward, this list should change to suit your needs and reflect your experiences. 

File resignation paperwork

Obtain a copy of the employee’s resignation or termination paperwork. Save it to their employee file. If an employee has submitted notice of their resignation, make sure to provide them with an acceptance of their resignation in writing. 

Communicate staffing change

When an employee leaves for any reason, several people and departments will need to be formally notified. Enter all relevant termination information into your HR database. Notify payroll to expedite any outstanding reimbursements and make sure pay will stop on the appropriate date. 

Communicate through email to any leadership that will be impacted by the staffing change.

Prepare to meet

Schedule an offboarding meeting for the employee and a member of the HR team. Prepare the questions you will ask in their offboarding interview and if possible, provide the employee with a copy of the questions ahead of time. 

Ready any non-compete or NDA paperwork that the employee will need to sign. Also, prepare any relevant benefits paperwork like information on COBRA and their 401(k).

Turn in materials

Collect all company property from the employee, including but not limited to: 

• Petty cash.
• Expense accounts.
• Company credit cards.
• Employee ID.
• Keycards or physical cards.
• Any and all electronics and their accessories.

Revoke their access to email, intranet and any platforms used to store and share files. Review if there are any outstanding funds due to the employee, like recent bonuses or payout for unused PTO. 

Share knowledge

This is arguably the most important step of offboarding. Ask employees to prepare their responsibilities and knowledge for transfer. They should document all of their processes and map where important files are stored. Support this process by providing employees with their own offboarding checklist so nothing important is forgotten. 

Reorganize

Remove the employee from any standing/recurring meetings, schedules, mailing lists, your organization chart, employee database and any outward-facing materials like the company website. 

Offboarding best practices

Every offboarding process will be different. Establish standards and guiding principles for your department so you can always successfully achieve your offboarding goals. Review our best practices below to identify what is most important for your company’s needs, your department’s needs and the needs of each individual employee when leaving. 

Remember that this process should support your brand, the transfer of knowledge, the employee’s departure experience and the security of the business.

Get organized and stay organized

Developing your offboarding into a streamlined process will help you process employees more effectively and efficiently and help maintain a standard of excellence. The more organized you are, the better employees will feel about the process. 

Create a folder that has all the necessary paperwork included for exit discussions, including: 

• Healthcare information.
• 401(k) details.
• NDAs.
• Non-competes.
• Employee offboarding checklist.
• Severance packages.
• Updated contact forms.

Make space for personal needs 

Employees will have their own agenda and hierarchy of needs when departing. Be prepared to schedule additional meetings to answer their questions or provide them with necessary support. Employees will most likely be interested in information on COBRA, their 401(k) plan, cashing out unused PTO and how to transition any other benefits accounts like HSAs. 

The more care and attention you pay to an employee’s personal concerns, the better impression they will have of the company when departing.

Help coordinate knowledge transfer

Ask employees how you can help them transition ongoing and upcoming projects to other teammates. Emphasize the employee’s value and celebrate their work while making sure that remaining employees feel supported taking on additional tasks. 

A smooth transfer without knowledge gaps makes all involved feel better about the change. Help by scheduling handoff meetings and providing an offboarding checklist to employees.

Wrap up the process

Build a definitive end to your offboarding process that creates closure for employees and allows you to double-check any and all steps. Remind employees to take all of their personal items home before the last day and provide them with materials to wipe down any workspaces. 

Review checklists together with the employee on their last day. If it is standard procedure, or necessary, to have security accompany a departure, have a manager or coworker also join the exit so that employees do not feel as if they are being forcibly removed.

Conducting an exit interview

The most important part of offboarding is setting time aside to meet with employees. This is when you can go over exit paperwork, answer questions the employee has, double-check your offboarding checklist to make sure all the items have been or will be addressed and conduct an exit interview. 

This interview is an invaluable opportunity to get honest feedback about what your company does well and where it needs to improve. Observe the following exit interview best practices to build a successful offboarding practice:

Your purpose

Establish the intent and goals of the exit interview, and encourage them to be open and honest. You want to cultivate an understanding that this process is not malicious but genuine. This can help disperse some of the awkwardness.

Your timing

An interview is best conducted during an employee’s last week, in the case of advance notice, so that it also functions as a checkpoint to review the rest of the offboarding process. Sometimes, a friendly interview can be held after an employee has departed and had some time away from the company. Touch base with your team to find the best timing for each employee.

Your advocate

Employees typically choose to leave a role because of their direct management. Whatever your company culture is, experiences vary from team to team. It’s best not to put a leader in an exit interview with their employee. Instead, select a neutral party from the HR team who will best represent the shared goals of the offboarding process.

Your questions

An employee can only answer the questions you give them. You want to create a structured conversation that makes employees feel safe, supported and heard. Don’t leave them to do most of the heavy lifting, even if you think you know why an employee has chosen to leave.

Ask questions like:

• Why did you make the decision to leave?
• Is there anything we could have done to prevent your resignation?
• What was your relationship like with your manager?
• Did you find your work too easy, rewarding or challenging? What did you like best about your role?
• What advice would you give to your team?
• What changes would you make to build a better working environment?

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

How do businesses benefit from offboarding?

Comprehensive offboarding protects businesses from security risks, supports seamless transition of work responsibilities and helps identify areas of improvement for the future. 

Former employees can have a large impact on the perception of your business in the marketplace. A well-organized and supportive departure helps protect your brand and leaves former employees with a good overall impression.

How should you offboard an employee?

Handle employee departures, no matter their nature, delicately and with transparency. Disgruntled employees are a security risk as well as a risk to overall impressions of your brand. 

Make time for employees’ questions and needs and remain available to them throughout the process. Do not provide more advance notice than necessary to terminated employees, as they can become malicious, impacting security, productivity and morale.

What are some risks involved in employee offboarding?

Failure to properly offboard an employee can result in data breaches, loss of institutional knowledge and disgruntled former employees. Avoid the following mistakes:

• Not keeping IT and HR synced throughout the offboarding process.
• Waiting too long to revoke employee access to company systems.
• Giving too much notice to terminated employees.
• Not communicating with impacted teams about a departure.

How long does offboarding take?

The timeline for offboarding is largely determined by how much notice an employee provides or the purpose for their termination. To standardize your offboarding results, no matter the scenario, have an offboarding checklist prepared to walk you through everything that needs to be done. 

Any good plan will allow you to pivot easily. Collect all necessary documents and have them on hand so you never have to scramble to process an employee’s departure.

How do you offboard remote employees?

Offboarding for remote employees is largely the same as offboarding onsite employees, save for the return of physical company property. You will need to prepare and ship any materials an employee needs in order to return items like their laptop, monitor or company cell phone. 

Make sure to include shipping labels for the items’ return and to include tracking numbers for those items in your documentation.