Employee Offboarding – Importance and Meaning

Table of Content 

1. Employee Offboarding Meaning: What is Employee Offboarding 

2. What Are the Different Types of Offboarding? 

3. Why Is Offboarding Important  

4. What Is the Employee Offboarding Process? 

5. Employee Offboarding Checklist  

6. What Is the Offboarding Policy of HR?  

Employee Offboarding Meaning: What is Employee Offboarding 

Employee offboarding is the process that a company follows when an employee leaves the company. 

 The position of the person is vacant for the new applicant, and this process is done for both types of employees who leave the company of their own will and for the ones who are laid off by the company. 

What Are the Different Types of Offboarding? 

The two different types of offboarding is technical offboarding and socio-emotional offboarding. 

The former one is more inclined towards the practical aspects such as taking all the assets from the person leaving the company like laptop and other returnable items. 

On the other hand, the latter one is more related to the personal and social side of leaving the company. It includes how the employee is taking this partition with the company. On behalf of the company, you as HR need to make sure that you make the person feel supported and offer them a smooth transition out of the office. You can achieve this by having a good offboarding process in place and applying it the right way. 

Why Is Offboarding Important  

The offboarding is important for the company as it helps you build your company’s reputation, to keep your data secure, and build a positive company culture. 

Just like good onboarding is important, if you have had a good offboarding, it’ll help the company maintain good relations with their team members because mutual respect is required while the business relationship is going on and when it has ended. 

What Is the Employee Offboarding Process? 

A good offboarding process should have the following rules: 

• It should minimize the disruption in the organization. 
• It should protect the confidentiality of the company’s data and information. 
• HR should take feedback of the employee who is disengaging with the company despite their reasons—whether they’re leaving the company on their own or the company has decided to part ways with them. 
• You should place a farewell party for them—it can be as simple as calling all the team members in the cafeteria, cutting a cake, and having everyone speak about the person leaving the company. It’ll show them respect and they’re more likely to still leave the company on good terms under certain conditions. 
• Out of courtesy, you can also provide the employee who is leaving the office with outplacement services if it’s required for them. 

Employee Offboarding Checklist  

Here’s the employee offboarding checklist: 

1. Make sure you communicate everything clearly and at the right time—best way is to have this conversation as soon as possible. 

2. Begin with the paperwork before the employee leaves the company. It includes resignation or termination letter, medical insurance, retirement accounts, and unemployment insurance, or any other non-disclosure or non-compete agreements. 

3. The employee currently working in that position knows it in and out, ask them to write a job description for what exactly you’ll need in the candidate who fills this role to perform the best. 

4. Conduct an exit interview. 

5. Make sure you have taken all the assets and company property from the employee disengaging with the company. 

6. Give the employee a farewell. 

7. Let the employee know they can join again in the future if this is the case. 

8. Part on good notes and maintain the employer and employee’s relationship. 

What Is the Offboarding Policy of HR? 

An offboarding policy is basically a document that you create and outline all the steps required in it for including the exit process. It helps you smoothly offboard people even if there’s a new HR handling this process because it’s documented. 

Plus, when the offboarding policy is clear, you have a leverage that your company will not be vulnerable to data breaches or any other security threats and legal issues. Plus, it helps maintain the relationship between the employer and the employee. 

Having the right offboarding policy helps you with the following: 

• It helps you manage the challenges the right way and reassign the responsibilities. 
• It enables you to come up with an exit interview template. 
• You can provide a consistent offboarding experience for all the employees leaving your company.  
• It helps you reduce the security risks as you can easily reclaim all the company assets when you have a policy in place. 
• It can help you prevent any legal issues that may arise—for instance, contract disputes, compensation disputes, or wrongful termination; and the company can maintain their good relationship with the person leaving.