Simplify your employee's exit process with this easy-to-follow offboarding process.
by Anna Coucke - February 24th, 2023
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When we consider the employee lifecycle, we tend to focus on onboarding and engagement while overlooking a crucial part – the offboarding or employee exit process. Overall, companies are much more likely to focus on onboarding, with 58% having a formal onboarding process but only 29% having an established offboarding process.
Unlike onboarding, where candidates and HR share the excitement of a new journey, offboarding doesn't always happen in good spirits. Unexpected terminations can make emotions run high, but every offboarding experience can potentially leave a good impression, and it starts with humanizing the process.
The last impression can be just as important as the first impression for an employee – they may return as a boomerang employee or become an active part of your organization's alumni who continue to promote your employer brand. Also, your current employees will notice how you treat their former colleague (and potentially, their friend) during the employee exit process, which can impact their opinion of their employer and future in the organization.
Employee offboarding is the exit process that helps both organizations and employees understand the reasoning behind their decision to leave the company. Whether the employee decides to leave themselves or the organization makes the decision to let them go, an effective offboarding process can reduce the chance of misunderstandings between both parties. It can also be an excellent opportunity to receive the departing employee’s feedback about the organization and answer any questions they might have before they move on to their next professional step.
For human resources, the interpersonal aspects of the employee offboarding process are crucial—even if the employee is leaving on good terms, terminations can be sensitive. You’ll want to ensure you consistently complete all of the necessary exit process documents and remain compliant. To achieve this, you can utilize a solution like GoCo to streamline your outdated, manual processes for offboarding paperwork and make an often difficult task as easy as possible. Just like the process of onboarding new hires, by dealing with the paperwork aspects of offboarding first, you can focus on the human element to ensure a smooth transition for the employee and organization.
Your goal should be to treat every employee as well as you did when they first started. Regardless of how they come about, terminations can be emotional for the employee. It’s crucial to treat terminations with compassion and empathy – recognize you’re dealing with a human being who is getting separated from the income and benefits needed to support their family and themselves. People deserve to have the most positive experience possible, even if they are being fired.
