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Employee Experience WalkMe TeamUpdated June 7, 2021

Tips for Creating a Digital Employee Offboarding Process

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A digital employee offboarding experience can greatly simplify employees’ departure from the workforce.

In today’s digital workplace, in fact, digital offboarding is practically a necessity.

Fully remote workers, for instance, must be offboarded remotely – a situation that some workers experienced during COVID-19.

But how do you make an effective digital offboarding experience?

Below, we’ll learn why digital offboarding is needed and how to create a positive digital offboarding process.

Table of Contents

The Benefits of Structured Offboarding

Inevitably, employees will leave an organization.

At some point during their careers, preferably later rather than sooner, they will choose to move on. Or, in some cases, that choice is made for them. Or, in other cases, they will move up within the same organization.

In any of the above cases, an effective offboarding experience can be beneficial for both employees and employers.

For instance, a good offboarding process:

Leaves a positive impression on departing employees
Maintains a positive relationship with former workers
Successfully hands off the departing employee’s work to successors
Minimizes the disruption of transitioning from old to new workers
Offers insight into the reasons why the employee left
Provides employers with information that can be used to improve the workplace

In short, offboarding is the opposite of onboarding. While onboarding initiates employees into the workforce, offboarding provides closure, both for workers and the organization.

To gain benefits such as those covered here, however, it is important to build an offboarding process correctly.

How to Structure the Offboarding Process

When designing an offboarding process, it is a good idea to start with the goals, then work backwards.

Good goals include those covered above, such as maintaining an amicable relationship with employees, leaving employees with a positive impression of the company, and obtaining feedback about the workplace.

Once these goals have been articulated, processes can be designed to achieve those aims.

Typical offboarding procedures will include steps such as:

Conducting an exit survey or interview. An exit interview, survey, or poll serves much the same function as any other data-driven process. The insights offered can help managers understand the employee’s experience, why they left, and if there is anything about the business that can be improved upon.
Gathering employee equipment. Naturally, if the employee uses any of the employer’s hardware, including ID cards or office equipment, that should be returned before the employee leaves.
Closing out IT accounts. For security reasons, IT accounts should be closed promptly – ideally within minutes of the employee’s departure. This can be accomplished by either pre-scheduling the account closure from IT or by marking this as an appointment on the IT staff’s calendar.
Having the employee document workflows and procedures. When employees leave a company, they take their knowledge with them. To better preserve their knowledge and experience within the organization, when necessary, they should document and standardize their workflows.
Having the employee train their replacement. If a new hire comes into the office before the employee leaves, the departing employee is often the best person to perform the new employee training.
Completing paperwork and documentation. Upon departure, the employee will also need to complete certain types of documents. These can include severance packages, benefits packages, address update forms, and so forth.

Naturally, it is in everyone’s best interest to digitize this offboarding process as much as possible. Doing so can simplify departure, minimize friction, and ensure that nothing gets left out.