7 rzeczy, o których musisz pamiętać przy odejściu pracownika
7 things to remember when offboarding an employee
JANUARY 17, 2019
Running your own business and employing people? Or you’re a manager in charge of your own team? Surely, you have parted ways with employees more than once. In this time and age, people are not as attached to companies as they used to be. Deciding on switching jobs comes easier now. Employees can lay down their own conditions, while you struggle to find a good candidate.
However good are the working conditions at your organization, you will be handed a two-weeks notice eventually. There are things beyond your control. If you’re not able to present a counter-offer, you can at least make the best use of the notice period. Make the company ready for the employee’s exit, and part ways in high spirits.
Keep in mind these 7 things in case of employee’s departure.
1. When an employee quits, don’t keep it a secret
It’s never easy to let other team members know their colleague is leaving. But if you fear it will damage morale, consider if it’s worse than letting murmuring spread. And you can be sure it will if you don’t throw it into high relief. Prevent uncertainty and communicate the news early. Decide with the departing employee who would pass this information along, and if it should be done personally or by email.
2. Transfer knowledge
Make the best use of the notice period to learn as much as you can about the position you will have to fill. Together with the departing person create lists of:
This set of information will prove helpful especially if the new employee will be rained by someone else than the departing person. You can also use it for writing a detailed job offer.
3. Retrieve assets
It’s rather hard to forget about collecting employees hardware like computer or mobile phone. However, over the years, they could have received other items no one remembers about. Check if the departing employee should return anything of the following items:
It's a good practice to keep a company assets database, where you can see all items assigned to every employee.
4. Do the paperwork and settle reimbursements
Depending on where your business operates, you have specific legal responsibilities. Neglecting it may cause your company severe penalties, so make sure to check what is required from you when the employee's contract ends. Also, make sure you have a signed letter of resignation. Before the last paycheck check if the employee has any travel or company expenses that were not reimbursed.
5. Go through the Exit Interview
Do not waste the chance to find out what needs to be improved to make your company a better place to work. One of the best ways to get reliable and honest feedback is the exit interview. You can get really valuable information, as this conversation will be as honest as it can get.
The interview should be conducted by a human resources officer. Harsh words can be difficult to process by the immediate supervisor, especially if they were the main reason for leaving (which, according to the Gallup study, translates into 50 percent of cases).
Example exit interview questions:
Gathering feedback is not enough. You need to set up a procedure, specifying what to do with all the information, so that it won't go to waste. For example, you can anonymize interview reports and periodically present them to the board. Keep in mind, that the exit interview is not a requirement so the employee can refuse to participate.
6. Take time to say goodbye, and leave the door open
Take time to make the last day pleasant for the leaving employee. For example:
Approach your parting well and you will leave the door open if the employee wanted to return in the future or recommend your company to a friend. So keep their current contact information in your HR database. A good idea is to keep a company alumni page on LinkedIn, so that you can keep in touch with your employees years after they exit.
7. Make sure every little thing was taken care of
After the employee has left, go through a checklist to make sure that everything is settled. Make sure that:
If your company is subject to GDPR, you have to pay particular interest to revoke access to systems containing personal data (email included). After the contract has ended, the person cannot have any access to this sort of data processed by your company.
Streamline employee offboarding process with FlowBoard
The sheer number of issues to oversee during an employee offboarding can give you a headache, and the scale of the problem grows with the size of your company. Trying to keep everything in mind, eventually will lead to forgetting to get something important done. Depending on your local law, this may cause financial penalties for the company!
An example checklist in employee offboarding process (FlowBoard)
Fortunately, you can make use of complete and free tools, like FlowBoard. Register your account, create your employee offboarding checklist (or adjust the pre-made template) and run it repeatedly with a couple mouse clicks. Every time the offboarding process is run, FlowBoard will copy and delegate tasks to competent employees and will keep an eye on the due dates.