The Importance of Employee Offboarding

It’s important to realize that the experiences your employees have before, during, and after their employment with your company all contribute to determining their full potential. Effective onboarding, performance management, and employee offboarding procedures demonstrate to your staff that your business appreciates the importance of a strong employee-employer relationship. Making the time for a thorough offboarding procedure demonstrates to present and potential workers that your company appreciates them for reasons beyond their impact on the bottom line.

HR pays a lot of attention to onboarding and performance management, but less focus is paid to streamlining your offboarding procedure. Offboarding, however, is crucial for upholding your company’s reputation, improving the working conditions for your present staff, and retaining networking opportunities.

What is Employee Offboarding?

Employee offboarding is the procedure that results in a formal end between a worker and a corporation via retirement, termination, or resignation. It includes every choice and action made throughout the course of an employee’s departure such as transferring the duties of that employee’s position, removing credentials and access rights, returning equipment, and interviewing exiting employees to obtain feedback. 

Offboarding basically makes sure there are no loose ends when an employee leaves the organization, so you don’t end up emailing a former employee two weeks later asking for his or her ID card, for instance. Additionally, you can learn from the process what you can do to make things better for your present and future employees.

The Employee Offboarding Process: Why is it Important?

When an employee quits, they either become an ally or a rival of your business. Advocates will speak well of you and may recommend new hires to you. Antagonists will not endorse your company to anyone, which could harm the organization over time. Utilize offboarding to transform all departing employees to become brand ambassadors.

A smooth offboarding procedure lessens the likelihood that issues will remain after the employee leaves. When you take the time to fully comprehend the employee’s experience, you and your employee can part ways with more networking, professional development, and career progression options.

Employer Brand Through Offboarding

Understanding the employee experience shouldn’t wait until offboarding when it’s already too late to make changes. Building relationships between employers and employees ought to be ongoing, not just something to check off during onboarding. When considering applying or reflecting on their daily work experience, employees want to know what their future with your organization holds.

A company’s employer brand is how potential employees, customers, and the general public perceive it. To attract and keep talented employees in your firm, you must establish a strong employer brand. But the entire employee experience, including offboarding, is reflected in your business brand. Giving employees a good start and then watching how long they stay is insufficient.

According to research by ExecuSearch, 86% of professionals stated they would switch professions if they were given greater opportunities for professional growth. Further research by Fortune revealed that boredom and long hours, rather than low pay or poor management, were the key reasons why the majority of people in leadership roles quit their jobs in search of better ones.

Or, to put it another way, these workers quit due to two key signs of disengagement. It’s not low pay or bad management that causes the majority of people in leadership roles to quit for better possibilities; it’s boredom and long hours. The importance of employee engagement is demonstrated by these two numbers and shows how they affect all aspects of the employee experience, from onboarding to offboarding, and everything in between.

See these 10 Ways You Can Keep Your Remote Teams Engaged.

Think About Impact 

Your employees also have an impact on your reputation, even if you have control over how your company portrays itself. According to a study by Software Advice, more than 50% of job seekers looked at Glassdoor job reviews before submitting an application. Additionally, almost 50% of people who read online employer reviews did so prior to engaging in any other job search activity. No one wants to waste time applying to companies with one-star reviews.

Every choice your company makes could have an impact on your employer brand given the unprecedented level of transparency job seekers now have. Having employees on board and depending on their pay and benefits to keep them from leaving is a surefire way to have them leave your company earlier than expected. To get favorable feedback from former workers and develop a positive employer brand, your company needs to consistently provide a positive employee experience across all departments throughout the entire employee lifecycle.

Your offboarding procedures allow you one last opportunity to show your organization’s principles to departing employees and to demonstrate that your business is who it claims to be. This contributes significantly to developing an employer brand that is stronger and deeper than basic marketing.

The Performance Conversation and Offboarding

One of the crucial discussions that need to take place between staff members, managers, and leadership throughout the employment lifecycle is offboarding. However, despite the fact that regular communication can lead to a stronger sense of purpose and better job results, personal fears can make minor conflicts worsen. 

A great workplace doesn’t downplay its problems through successful PR strategies. Of all the departments, HR probably has the clearest understanding of the significance of dealing with problems rather than ignoring them. HR teams should have set protocols regarding different circumstances such as legal issues, payroll issues, office romances, employee disputes, or other problems that may arise as businesses expand.

Recognizing problems, making employees feel heard, and taking methodical action to transform a good workplace into a great one are all essential components of creating a great workplace, even when those actions result in employees finding new employment in a different department or company.

Some executives may find it challenging to address their employee experience problems, particularly if they fear that failure may harm their standing with their superiors or undermine employee confidence in the company. However, downplaying employees’ decisions to leave doesn’t eliminate the effects of turnover, and in some instances, a poor offboarding approach might backfire and significantly worsen the problem.

Effective offboarding cannot be an afterthought or a surprise. Your employee communication routine should organically flow into your offboarding procedure. Every employee can receive weekly coaching from their manager. A guiding principle is to not wait for the annual evaluation or even offboarding. The annual evaluation shouldn’t reveal anything unexpected. Be more nimble and implement changes quickly.

The process of letting go of non-contract staff will always involve a certain amount of the unexpected. But there is less likelihood of a shock to the employee or employer during offboarding if the manager and employee communication is regular, open, and transparent.

Streamline Your Offboarding Process with ZenAdmin

With so many things to consider and a whole checklist of things to do for the offboarding process, it’s understandable why the process can take quite some time. Luckily, there are platforms like ZenAdmin that enable you to automate and streamline the process by taking care of administrative and arduous tasks.

ZenAdmin allows you to seamlessly submit offboarding requests, which will trigger a set of actions such as employee device wipeout or lockdown, device retrieval and storage, and more. This helps take away the hours spent on back-and-forth emails, stress over logistics and shipping, and more. See what ZenAdmin can do for you and your company by booking a demo today!